FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 



F OLLO W ING THE 

F R O N T I E R 

BY 

ROGER P O C O C K 



NEW YORK 

McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO 

M C M 1 1 1 



r i o h o 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

T*vp Copie* R«oeived 

JUL 16 1903 

Copyright fcnuy 

:LASS»<t XXcNo. 

COPY & 



Copyright, 1003, by 
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. 



Published September, 1903 



CONTENTS 



</?* 



, /V 



•CHAPTER 








PAGE 


I. 


Puppyhood, , 


3 


II. 


Sinking, 




• 


20 


III. 


The Trail of the Trooper, 






31 


IV. 


War 






41 


V. 


Peace, ...... 






68 


VI. 


The Great Patrol, . 






78 


VII. 


The Trail of the Journalist, 






. 99 


Till. 


The Trail of the Missionary, 






127 


IX. 


The Trail of the Savage, 






143 


X. 


The Yokohama Pirates, . 






152 


XI. 


The Trail of the Prospector, 








XII. 


The Trail of the Trader, 






. 188 


XIII. 










XIV. 


The Trail of the Cargador, . 






236 


XV. 


The Long Trail, 






257 


XVI. 


The Tratl of the Outlaw, 






283 


XVII. 










XVIII. 


A Record in Horsemanship, 






333 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 



I 

PUPPYHOOD 

THE snow was falling heavily on the ship's 
deck, but the place where I sat down had 
become quite damp, while in the muzzle of a 
popgun I molded white lighthouse towers to mount 
on snowball cliffs around my coast. Presently my 
brother flounced by along the poop, very important, 
his hand dripping gore from a fine new wound. He 
was too proud to speak, and I sobbed with jealous 
rage. That is my first memory. 

Our home was an old battleship used for the train- 
ing of " boys unconvicted of crime," but under sus- 
picion ; in my case to be painfully confirmed. As I 
grew, too good to be quite wholesome, it was with a gen- 
eral air of having stepped into the wrong century by 
mistake. When I was old enough, and went to school 
in the Midlands, the big boys, with a healthy instinct 
of something wrong, did their best to put me out of 
my misery; and I survived, but with broken nerve, 
a coward. 

[3] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

Yet that was not so disastrous as the grammar- 
school tuition, which still prepares the modern boy to 
be a scrivener for the sixteenth century. We asked 
for bread, and they gave us a stone — the bones of 
dead languages to gnaw instead of the living speech 
of living nations ; the useless abstractions of Euclid 
and the syntax instead of commercial mathematics ; 
the squalid biographies of English kings instead of 
the history of our freedom ; the names of counties to 
us who were citizens of an Empire ; dogmatic theology 
to cut us off from Christ ; and no training whatever 
of the hands in craftsmanship, or of the eye in aiming 
rifles to defend our homes. 

Having missed an education, I came forth blinking 
into the modern world with an apologetic manner ap- 
pealing for kindness, and large useless hands, as fit 
for earning wages as a nine-days' puppy. 

When asked to choose a trade I had no impulse, for 
all that my forefathers had won with the sword was 
barred to the penniless son of a half-pay captain. 
My father found me a most suitable opening as a 
clerk, but when I was turned out of the Submarine 
Telegraph Service, useless, ashamed of being a further 
expense, it was to tramp the streets of London in 

[4] 



PUPPYHOOD 

despair. Because I was too young to enlist, being 
only fifteen, my mother found me in the streets and 
led me home, saying no words then or afterwards. As 
for me, I put on an air of high estrangement, walking 
in that mysterious gloom which affords much com- 
fort to the young puppy, but is apt to depress its 
family. 

When my father felt depressed about his income, 
we always moved, generally to another continent, by 
way of economy. To this, his one dissipation, my 
mother deferred with patience, and had shifted her 
home by turns to Jersey, Bombay, Southsea, New Zea- 
land, Ludlow, Shields, and Norwood, without allowing 
him to feel disturbed in his comfort. On this occa- 
sion the financial depression landed him in Canada, and 
we followed — sailing from Liverpool. As we entered 
the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a piece of ice nipped off the 
ship's propeller, whereupon the third mate explained 
to me that we were suffering from rats in the cylinder. 

This, with nearly a thousand people on board, was 
very awkward, especially when the helpless ship was 
picked up by a wandering ice-field, which was jammed 
by a gale against the cliffs of Cape Breton. The 
frail iron walls of the liner bent inward, crushed by 

[5] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

incalculable pressure, and we came near the end of all 
earthly troubles before a change of wind, and a search 
expedition, delivered us timely from the jaws of death. 
After our settlement in a cottage beside the St. Law- 
rence, my father put me out to grass upon a farm, and 
the farmer bore with me to the limits of human en- 
durance before he wrote a letter of protest, saying 
that he found himself ruled by an elderly gentleman 
with a mania for imparting information, and a distaste 
for cleaning the stables. 

The next expedient was to send me to an agricultural 
college, where youths are instructed in the simple ele- 
ments of inorganic chemistry and the complexities of 
sorting out frozen potatoes. The corrupt institution 
received quarterly bribes for allowing me to lurk on 
the premises. 

From this safe anchorage I was wrenched away to 
a clerkship in Life Assurance. I worked hard at boat- 
ing, bathing, and musical evenings, until the manage- 
ment sent word to my father that my valuable time 
was being thrown away in their office, and that my 
true vocation would be found out of doors, in the 
nearest chain-gang. On this my father referred me 
to various burning texts in the Holy Scripture, and 

[6] 



PUPPYHOOD 

would have cut me off with a shilling but for the pain- 
ful fact that he was short of change. 

In the next stages of the Road to Ruin, I traveled 
by train across Ontario, and by steamer through Lake 
Huron and Lake Superior, until at the end of a 
further voyage in a steam-launch I came to my first 
camp on the great Frontier. 

The campfire was a stack of dead trees, whose red- 
hot logs sent up a column of flame. A circle of tired 
men basked in the heat of it, behind them glimmered 
a few lighted tents, and walls of black forest towered 
gaunt above. 

These walls reached away in darkness, but between 
them, under the moonlight, there lay a confusion of 
jagged roots, charred logs and stumps of trees, with 
here the semblance of a ghastly face, there limbs which 
seemed to move as though the swath were a battlefield 
strewn with the dead and the dying of some unearthly 
war. One might have traced that swath hewn in the 
timber, with its walls of darkness, and its moonlit ruin, 
past many a campfire, many such groups of men, for 
had it started from London it would have reached to 
Rome, glittering for fourteen hundred miles with the 
lighted encampments of an army. And still this was 
[7] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

but the forest section of a gigantic path then (1883) 
in the making, the Canadian Pacific Railway, whose 
builders were the pioneers of marching Empire. 

But in the first camp on the Trail of the Pioneers 
I can only remember, through the mist of years, a 
navvy who stood beside me at the fire, a man of middle 
age, with a rough Scotch face, who, cocking up one 
shrewd gray eye, said quietly, " I hear you're looking 
for me? " 

I had come a thousand miles to see the General 
Officer commanding this war of giants, and found a 
navvy. He glanced at my letter of introduction, 
scanned my face again, and so with a patient sigh 
turned back to enjoy the warmth of the red flames. He 
asked me no futile question as to what I could do, had 
no illusive hopes, and if he gave me a job it would 
be only to save me from starving to death in the 
bush. 

One glance had shown him a youth tender and awk- 
ward, with a nose long enough to lead, but a chin too 
weak to follow. Such a chin as that shrinks back 
from success in life, such a delicate inquiring nose 
always gets hurt in a fight, and dreamy blue eyes are 
apt to see much trouble. Perhaps in Mr. Middleton's 

[8] 



PUPPYHOOD 

sigh there was just a trace of pity. He lent me 
blankets that night — his own, I think — and next morn- 
ing took me away in his launch along the coast of 
Lake Superior. I wanted to serve in his personal 
following, but he knew too much, and palmed me off 
that very afternoon upon an unoffending surveyor at 
Gravel Bay. 

The place was called Gravel Bay because there was 
nothing but rock, a towering precipice, in places 
abrupt from deep water. The road-bed of the rail- 
way had to be hewn out along the edge of the lake, 
and, apart from costing two hundred and fifty thou- 
sand dollars a mile, it was full of nice little problems 
for the engineers to solve. To circumvent the wily 
avalanche, to keep the rock-slides from straying across 
the track, those were the beginnings of wisdom. And 
after rains the embankments were attacked by cat- 
aracts five hundred feet high, thundering down from 
the sky-line, which had to be persuaded to fall else- 
where. 

Then there was the lake always playing tigerish 

games with the foreshore. A contractor built a wharf 

under our cliffs, and landed a cargo of stores. Next 

morning the ship lay in safety, moored head and stern 

[9] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

to the rocks, but wharf and cargo had sunk far beyond 
human reach. A few weeks later the sea took another 
bite, this time at Mackay's Harbor, where a big log- 
camp and the Divisional Storehouses had been newly 
built on a commodious point of land. This headland 
of gravel, loosened by the rains, slid down its sloping 
subsoil of clay, carrying off the buildings, and stores 
worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The 
people had barely time for flight before the settlement 
foundered like a ship. 

Our survey party was engaged long hours a day in 
marking out ground for the railway, and in measuring 
the work done by the contractors, whose business was 
to cheat the syndicate. My special occupation was 
hunting for amethysts, or climbing crags, like a goat,, 
for the pleasure of reaching the top with an unbroken 
neck. These natural pleasures were sorely interrupted 
at times by the Boss, who wanted the ground marked 
out with numbered stakes, guide signs painted on 
rocks, or the dragging about of chains, tapes, and 
pickets. 

In the evenings I sat in the tent with the Boss, 
sketching ships and pretty girls in his notebooks, and 
diverting him from sordid mathematics with most in- 
[10] 



PUPPYHOOD 

teresting questions. Why was there no blue-colored 
food ? What word would rhyme with Saturday ? Or 
I would favor him with new ideas in speculative 
astronomy and submarine navigation. I think I was 
most practical at meal times. His patience was won- 
derful, and I was very happy. 

Indeed, the life was full of interest and variety, with 
occasional thrills when one tumbled off a cliff, dodged 
a falling rock, or, climbing from place to place by 
rope and ladder, came suddenly upon a little casual 
blasting and an unexpected shower of stones. One's 
days can never be monotonous when one has much to 
do with dynamite, for not even woman is more 
capricious in action. I knew a mule once to roll with 
a load of dynamite down a hill four hundred feet high. 
The mule got up, not a bit surprised, and went for 
the nearest grass, with that dynamite uninjured on 
her back. Compare that with what happened at 
Mackay's : five men were sitting in a cabin watching 
a few sticks of frozen dynamite thaw gently on the 
stove. The innocent, harmless stuff went off in the 
process, and dug the men a large grave on the site 
of their cabin. 

Seized as I am with a strong craving to tell dyna- 

[ii] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

mite stories, I must limit myself to events at Gravel 
Bay. Not far from our camp there was an overhang- 
ing crag some hundred and twenty-five feet high, 
known as Death's Head Peak, the scene, during the 
previous winter, of a dynamite comedy. 

The Construction Syndicate allowed no liquor to 
be sold on the works, and appointed detectives to 
check the traders who purveyed whisky-and-water 
ready mixed at five dollars a pint. In the dead of win- 
ter, Tom the Whisky-Runner came along with his 
deep-loaded cariole drawn on the ice-clad lake by a 
team of dogs. Entering Gravel Bay, he was chased 
by a detective on snowshoes, and, failing any hope of 
escape, drew up to await the worst under Death's Head 
Peak. The detective, having got Tom for sure, was 
advancing full of confidence, when the Whisky-Run- 
ner took from his load a canister of dynamite, lifted 
the heavy cylinder above his head, and remarked : 

" You see that stone ? " 

The detective saw a stone, projecting from the 
snow, midway between them. 

" When you pass that stone," said Tom, " down 
comes the cliff." 

Then the detective ran for life, and Tom drank to 
[12] 



PUPP YHOOD 

the health of his retreating enemy. He drank from 
the canister. 

Now, lest Death's Head Peak be ever minded here- 
after to drop down bodily on some passing train, we 
measured it for blasting; the holes were drilled and 
charged, and next day the general public was warned 
not to loaf about in the neighborhood. When the 
fuses were finally lighted our survey boat happened 
to be passing in front of the cliff, and the general 
public howled at us to clear out. Away we raced at 
full speed, but Death's Head Peak rose bodily in the 
air and came after us. 

In the main we won that race, but some of the 
smaller rocks passed over our heads, and fell a long 
way to seaward. 

With dynamite one got familiar in time, and 
callous; but the most hardened navvy had a fear of 
the young medical students for whose support we were 
all compelled to subscribe. Dynamite is swift but un- 
certain, but the " doctors " were slow and sure. The 
ground, too, was so rocky that their patients had to 
be taken some distance away for interment. 

The camp where I lived was the dirtiest on the 
coast. The cook's wife died of dirt, but the cook was, 
[13] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

to our deep regret, immune, and the seventy Italian 
navvies who slept in the mess-house loft got dysentery 
under his treatment. The Surveyor and I had a clean 
and pleasant tent, but, when we could not find excuse 
for meals elsewhere, we had to feed in the mess-house. 
Once, being late, I had supper there alone, and there 
was trouble among the Italians up in the loft. It 
seems that one of them had stabbed an Irishman, 
and in this matter committed a breach of etiquette. 
Anyway, he was kicked down the hatchway, lit near 
me with a crash and a howl, then fled for shelter 
among the cliffs. At midnight he stole back to collect 
his pay from the timekeeper, but afterwards renounced 
our company. 

With all his patience my Boss, the Surveyor, could 
not bear with me forever. The cliffs were full of 
amethysts, and my collection of slabs grew to a rock- 
ery just at the door of the tent. The crystals were 
sharp and prickty, so that when he fell over them at 
night, he cherished feelings towards me wholly be- 
yond expression. On Sundays his men needed rest, 
and that was my special day for getting lost, or stuck 
on the face of some impossible cliff. Then an ill- 
natured, hard-swearing, and contemptuous expedi- 
[14] 



PUPPYHOOD 

tion would be sent to my rescue, and the men would 
complain that they lost their day of rest. At the 
month's end, when Mr. Middleton came to inspect the 
works, my Boss reported himself as a camel and me 
as a straw. He had borne up wonderfully ; but Mr. 
Middleton took me away in the steam-launch. 

Morning brought us to Red Rock, a bay set in 
bright green meadows, dusky forest, and vivid scarlet 
cliffs ; and at the head was an old fort of whitewashed 
logs, a trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company. 
There was I cast ashore as a waste product. 

Not far from Fort Nipigon was a construction 
camp, with a street of shacks and tents devoted to the 
Seven Deadly Sins. The Hotel Vermin, where I lived, 
derived some romantic interest from the landlord's 
daughter, who had recently shot and wounded a 
boarder for failing to pay his bill. I was like to be 
in the same case unless I could make my escape from 
Nipigon, so spent my days at a point commanding 
the bay, hoping that one last steamer would call be- 
fore the lake froze, for in a few more days the entire 
coast would be ice-clad. At last a steamer called at 
the Fort, loaded with men, but before I could reach 
the wharf she discharged her passengers, then, with- 
[15] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

out a moment's pause, turned tail and bolted out of 
the harbor. There was no escape for me, any more 
than there was for those three hundred and seventy- 
five men left helpless to starve in the forest. Some 
swindling contractor in Toronto had promised them 
employment at three dollars and a half a day, rooked 
them of their passage-money, then turned them loose 
to die. 

Foreseeing danger, I hurried in to warn Camp 
Nipigon, which quietly prepared for siege. No provi- 
sions could be brought in for at least five months to 
come, and not a single ration could be spared. Work 
was found for twelve men, but the rest of the 
strangers camped hungry in the woods, sending us 
deputations at intervals to beg for mercy. All they 
got was a side of bacon and a barrel of biscuit, and 
that under threat of leveled revolvers. In time the 
poor wretches dispersed, eastward and westward along 
the line: but the camps, terrified by their very num- 
bers, refused them food, and some tramped two hun- 
dred miles eastward along the coast before they found 
relief. 

It was in the wake of their westward drift that I 
struck out on foot, hoping to win through to the town 
[16] 



PUPPYHOOD 

of Port Arthur. The snow lay deep, the cold had 
become intense, and the next lad who attempted the 
trip was frozen to death on the way. Four miles out, 
at Camp Roland, I found a twelve-mile section of 
completed track, a gravel train starting for the rail 
head, and a party of Swedish navvies for company. 
We did not enjoy that journey, yet had much reason 
for gratitude, because, as we lay torpid with cold on 
the loads of gravel, big sparks of wood from the en- 
gine kept setting our clothes on fire, a thoughtful ar- 
rangement of Providence which preserved us from 
that sleep which has no awakening. Arrived at the 
rail head, the Swedes paid blackmail to the train 
hands, only fifty cents apiece for all our pleasures. 
Not caring to attend that levee, I walked on, but was 

glad of company when the Swedes caught up with 
me, for we had no word of any language in common, 
and, since we could not possibly disagree, became the 
best of friends. 

Night had fallen long ago, and we tramped on 
mile after mile in search of shelter. From horizon to 

horizon, straight as a ray of light, lay the embank- 
ment prepared for the railway, a snow-clad road 
skirted on either side by a snow-clad clearing, and 
[17] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

that walled on the right hand and the left with forest 
of impenetrable gloom. At intervals we would stand 
bewildered, wondering why there was no sign of human 
life; then move on to escape from the searching 
cold and the dreadful silence of an abandoned world. 
Hour after hour we moved like ghosts along the spec- 
tral course of white, between walls of darkness, and 
saw that nightmare avenue reach on to the end of the 
earth, even to where it singed the setting stars. At 
last we found the ruins of a wayside cabin, within it 
a wrecked stove, and a floor free from snow, of rough- 
cut pine trees. When the stove was red-hot we lay 
down, wishing for supper and blankets ; but the floor 
was like a bed of knives, and when the fire waned the 
outer cold stole in. I sat up then, drowsily feeding 
the stove and hugging it ; but very soon there was no 
more furniture to burn, and the cold came in again. 
The logs of the cabin, the trees of the forest were 
freezing, and as their sap expanded into ice, they 
split with a loud report like a gun-shot. The noise 
kept waking me out of stupor ; but I was very drowsy, 
and as it was not well to fall asleep I stole out of the 
cabin to walk on alone down the nightmare avenue 
through the woods. Presently I came to a black river 
[18] 



PUPPYHOOD 

barring the way, and across it lay a string of rolling 
ice-clad logs chained together. I took the logs at a 
run, and walked on. Day broke, and I went lame with 
a strained tendon, but contrived to hobble onward. 
Noon brought me to a wayside camp, where the people 
had been lately so humbled by pestilence that they 
allowed me dinner — cash down in advance — and a 
bottle of horse liniment which put my leg to rights. 
In the last few weeks no less than twenty-three men 
had been taken out from that camp and laid on the 
dump of the railway, with the next load of gravel by 
way of burial. 

Daily, the engines go roaring down that curve 
swinging their tails of sumptuous carriages, singing 
their song of triumph over dead men's bones. There 
never yet was a victory won without pain, or a con- 
quest made save by human sacrifice. 

Leaving the sorrowful camp I came in the evening 
to completed track, and found a gravel train, which 
at midnight brought me, well-nigh frozen, into Port 
Arthur. The town was very full, but food at last 
plentiful, and I found a warm place to sleep — on a 
billiard table. 

[19] 



II 

SINKING 

PORT ARTHUR was booming, and fully in- 
tended to eclipse Chicago. Once, indeed, when 
badly lost in the outer forest I came to a touch- 
ing inscription upon a signpost advising the bears 
that here Catherine Street met Johnson Avenue. 
They kept their tryst far from the haunts of men. 
Among the dipsomaniacs of all nations who thronged 
the wooden village I witnessed episodes intended to be 
anything but funny. One day, waiting on the hotel 
veranda for the dinner-bell, I timed, watch in hand, 
a battle fought close by between twenty Hungarian 
navvies and thirty Italians. They fought for posses- 
sion of the coal wharf, the wages being five dollars a 
day, and they hurtled like wild boars with knives and 
revolvers for twenty-five minutes without one com- 
batant, or even a bystander, being hurt. Under that 
veranda sprawled a poor old drunkard in the ditch, 
who next week, inheriting a fortune, changed his rags 
for a silk hat, evening dress, and long boots. Three 
[20] 



SINKING 

days he lived in this condition of splendor, but on 
the fourth set out for another world. Then there was 
the tailor's shop, conducted by a pair of handsome 
brothers who paraded their wares in the street, prome- 
nading in boots and breeches, embroidered shirts, and 
coats of silk corduroy, unspeakably pleased, envied by 
all beholders. The town was frequently on fire, al- 
ways gay; and when the local editor protested at the 
main street being used for a race-course, he was ad- 
monished by a letter signed, " Yours in blud, the 
Gang." 

Throughout one glittering week I reveled in 
chocolate creams and toothache, then resorted to a 
cheaper hotel and milder forms of debauchery until I 
could find employment. I was not in great demand, 
but got a fortnight's work engrossing conveyances for 
a lawyer, then turned myself loose as a milkman's 
chartered accountant. His accounts were on slips of 
paper, carried in all his pockets, and inscribed with 
cabalistic signs which looked Chinese, yet might have 
been Hieratic, but I sorted them out, and he told me 
to sue for my wages. 

The third employment was in a backwoods clearing. 
Probably my master had never employed a man who 
[21] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

talked so brilliantly or on so many themes ; but it was 
mainly conversational talent which I applied to herd- 
ing his cattle, and hauling his fence-rails in the snow- 
clad woods, to the chopping of water-holes through 
the ice of the creek, and the threshing of wheat with 
a flail. Still, what with his sweet disposition, and his 
need of inexpensive help, we got on fairly well until 
one da}', when we were threshing stroke on stroke to- 
gether, I paused to express a thought on paleontology. 
His flail struck mine, and, rebounding, smote his jaw. 
He never really liked me after that. Even though 
relations were strained, I bore no malice, but, as the 
days dragged on towards Christmas, was filled with 
charitable thoughts and pious hopes, while the missus 
filled the larder with everything pleasant to the eye 
and good for food. The adopted boy, who carried 
logs for the stove, would ogle me in secret, furtively 
stroking his stomach ; and the smell of the cooking 
warmed me with memories of home. We were both 
a little dismayed when on Christmas Eve the family 
loaded the sleigh and drove off to keep the feast in 
town, but were dumb with horror when, racing 
straight for the larder, we found it stripped, with only- 
bare rations for us of bread and bacon. 
[22] 



SINKING 

The dawn of that Christmas broke on log buildings 
deeply drifted, and pine trees loaded down with 
newly fallen snow. When I had watered the cattle 
I went to the threshing-floor, and there, with tired 
arms, all the day long beat with my flail, parting 
the grain from the straw. So I was able to 
pile the mangers with a Christmas feast for the 
cattle. * 

A kindly neighbor gave us dinner that day, but 
when night had fallen, and my work was not nearly 
done, I sent the orphan boy to kindle the stove and 
get our supper ready in the house. He did not say 
that he was offended with me, so when, dead tired, 
I crossed the starlit clearing to the house, it was with- 
out understanding why the windows were dark and 
the door bolted. Before I could begin the preparing 
of supper I had to break through the door, and caress 
that adopted child with hands of blessing. 

With the return of the family next day I found 
myself unpopular, but this engaging household re- 
frained from turning me out until New Year's Eve, 
it being their religious habit to offer a sacrifice at 
times of festival. After the long tramp to Port 
Arthur, the New Year of 1884 found me adrift in the 
[23] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

streets, enjoying a bracing wind at forty degrees be- 
low zero. 

Without being exactly tempted with any wages, I 
was presently engaged as " boots " at an hotel for 
navvies, to clean the spittoons, to wait at table, buck 
firewood, and chop out the water-hole daily through 
five or six feet of ice. Then I must carry forty buck- 
ets a day, and an extra forty buckets whenever the 
house was on fire, the average being one large con- 
flagration every fortnight. Spare time was de- 
voted to running errands, making beds, scrubbing 
floors, tending the stable, and assisting to quiet the 
boarders when they wanted to shoot the landlord : but 
all these delights came to a sudden end. The house 
had been three times on fire, so the date would be on 
or about 15th February, when the Boss called me up 
to the loft where a boarder was loudly complaining 
of his bed. " Jack," said the Boss, for that was my 
name at the time, " change beds with this gentleman." 
I resigned. 

Things had gone badly with me then, but that I 

came in for a fortune, a present of twenty-five dollars 

from home. I lived at the house of a carpenter's wife, 

whose red hair, thin lips, and pale blue eyes should 

[24] 



SINKING 

have been read as signals of danger. From the first 
she wanted to borrow my twenty -five dollars, and at 
this persisted, until in a fatuous mood I confessed to 
having in five weeks paid her the whole amount for my 
board. Only by slow degrees she realized that there 
was nothing left to borrow, that I was no longer of 
use, and cumbered the earth. She was carving a joint 
at the time, but, prompt to the idea of business first 
and pleasure afterwards, she rushed at once to the 
attack. My hand caught the knife as it struck, break- 
ing the force of the blow, but with a demoniac shriek 
she stabbed again. Once more I caught the blade, 
which cut the arteries of my hand and caused a dread- 
ful mess ; but she was making a third rush when her 
husband, entering, seized her round the waist. " Get 
out ! " said he. 

But my dignity was ruffled, for the woman had 
been rude, and I stood to m3 T demand for an apology. 

" Clear out," said the carpenter, " or I'll turn her 
loose ! " 

This argument was so forcible that I consented to 

pack my luggage, and only on being assured that my 

hostess was detained with embraces did I venture 

across the room with my portmanteau. Next day I 

[23] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

found from her indignant tradesmen that Mrs. Blank 
had left the country, taking the carpenter and all her 
personal effects. 

My next engagement was as a navvy at a dollar 
and a quarter a day, working with a section gang to 
keep the Canadian Pacific Railway in repair. The 
work consisted of renewing the wooden " ties," or 
sleepers, and in leveling the track with fresh bal- 
last — all very dull except the run home in the even- 
ing. Then the five of us jumped on our hand-car, 
pumped at the windlass brakes to get a start, and went 
flying down a seven-mile hill, a wild river on the left, 
rock and forest piling high on the right, the whirl- 
ing, blinding snow lashed straight in our faces, and 
the up-train for Winnipeg expected every moment. 
Afterwards, if we lived, there would be supper at 
Kaministiquia Station. On the whole, it was a nice 
week, and I was sorry when the gangs went out on 
strike; but in that squabble I had no concern what- 
ever, so shouldered my blankets, and tramped back 
through the snow to Port Arthur. 

There I fell in with a wandering photographer who 
had pop eyes, a round pink face, and a collection of 
views of the neighborhood. For him I peddled 
[26] 



SINKING 

photographs, and might have been enriched but that 
he suffered from pronounced alcoholic depression, and 
needed forty drinks of whisky every day to correct 
the symptoms. His pictures, too, developed striking 
alcoholic effects, whereas my customers liked them 
plain. Then the supply failed. 

Meanwhile I got the local agency for a book written 
by Queen Victoria. Because the people loved her they 
wanted copies, and these I ordered from Toronto. 
The lonely Frontier town was keen with expectation 
for what seemed like a personal message from Our 
Lady, but when, after a delay of many weeks, the 
parcel came, there was fifty dollars to pay and I was 
penniless. I pawned the parcel for fifty dollars, paid 
the charges, and handed the goods to my creditor. 
Then, trusted with one volume at a time, I delivered 
the books to my customers, got the money, made a 
settlement of my debts, and from this whirl of finance 
emerged in my usual condition — destitute. 

The spring had come, heralded by the wooden 
steamer Queen, which rammed through the ice-pack on 
Thunder Bay, and was made welcome by the popula- 
tion with flags, and cheering, a new brass band of 
deadly potency, and a banquet. 
[27] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

All through the summer the west wind brought 
clouds in the afternoon, which massed above Thunder 
Bay, to break upon the walls of Thunder Cape with 
a blinding, deafening display of electric power. From 
my little tent outside the town I watched these storms, 
as the Indians had watched them for ages. Sixteen 
miles out, sheer from the sea, lifted the basalt walls 
of Thunder Cape. In size, in shape, in position, this 
rock is another Gibraltar, and both promontories are 
molded in the likeness of a man lying stark upon 
the sea. So the great rock on Lake Superior is known 
to the Indians as a divine Hero guarded by the Eagle, 
whose wings make thunder and her eyes the lightning. 
She nests there every summer, and in her nest pre- 
serves the Great Medicine, the Secret of the Life 
Everlasting. 

I thought in those days that I should very soon 
know the secret, for I had not much food, or any 
strong hold upon life. I never dreamed as yet that 
there were others like me, other poor devils, who tried 
and failed, and tried and failed again ; that our name 
was Legion — the Lost Legion. Only one other out- 
cast did I meet, and we were strongly drawn together, 
though he was an elderly man and I no more than a 
[28] 



SINKING 
boy. He was a broken officer from the Imperial Serv- 
ice, by trade an explorer, a man of rare gifts, but a 
perfect martyr to delirium tremens. Of him I learned 
that from far out beyond the forest, to the westward, 
there were Plains reaching a thousand miles with no 
tree or rock ; and on these prairies ranged some 
strange wild cavalry known as the Mounted Police. 
The business seemed to be rough, full of adventure 
and hardship, a mixture of Heaven and the Happy 
Hunting-Grounds, much too good to be true. I ap- 
pealed to other men who had been to the West. " Oh, 
yes ! " they would answer ; " there's plains, and there's 
police, but there aint no money in it." 

Month after month the hunger grew upon me, the 
craving for the Plains and for that Service, until at 
last I managed to pay my fare on the first stage of 
the westward journey, and landing from a steamer at 
Duluth, the head of Lake Superior, set up my tent in 
the suburbs. Being washed out that night by a storm, 
I made a new camp in a ruined house on the hill over- 
looking the city, where the schoolboys came and 
played with me. I was a hermit, living on scraps of 
bread, hunting for work, until I fell in with a kindly 
old labor agent. He let me live by his stove, where 
[29] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

I got warm, feeding entirely on buttered toast, until 
lie found me work in a dairy. What with the kind- 
ness of the people there, the good food, and the work, 
I had gained strength wonderfully, when on the third 
day a letter arrived from home. My father had just 
heard, he said, of a regiment in Western Canada 
known as the Mounted Police. Would I like to join? 
He inclosed mone}^ to pay for the journey by rail to 
the recruiting depot at Winnipeg. 

That day a local doctor who examined me as to 
fitness for military service, advised me gravely that I 
had heart disease. The jumping heart, the flush, the 
wildly racing blood were indeed the symptoms of a 
malady not to be found in his books, and its name was 
— Hope ! 



[30] 



Ill 

THE TRAIL OF THE TROOPER 

1 REACHED Winnipeg on the 3d of November, 
1884. Until, turning the last street corner, I 
came on the gate of Fort Osborne, the whole busi- 
ness was a daydream, and the reality knocked me cold 
against a wall with sheer astonishment. A sentry was 
pacing before the gate, an enormous big dragoon. 
The helmet and crossbelt were white, the tunic scarlet, 
a belt of glittering brass cartridges carried the re- 
volver for side-arms — white gauntlets — breeches with 
a broad yellow stripe — long boots — spurs, — they 
never would take me ! Crushed with disappointment 
at his bulk, ashamed to offer up anything so frail or 
ignorant as myself, heart jumping with excitement, 
feet dragging with shyness, I crept nearer, and 
humbly begged for direction. " You wand to tage 
on? " said the sentry, " segond door on der left," and 
lie swung away to hide a grin. 

They must have been hard up for recruits ; the 
sentry, a German baron, said so afterwards when he 
[31] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

came off duty, and the sergeant in charge of the de- 
tachment remarked that the Outfit had sure gone to 
the devil. Sure, one poor little devil had come to the 
Outfit. They fed me, gave me blankets to sleep in, 
were kind to me, and next day shipped me off by noon 
train to the Regimental Headquarters at Regina. 

The dream had all come true, for as the train rolled 
westward I saw the Canadian Plains reaching away 
forever, and unbent so far as to patronize two merely 
civilian youths who asked me where I was bound for. 
There was horror in their eyes when I told them I be- 
longed to the Mounted Police, earnest compassion in 
their tone, as they warned me of a more than un- 
pleasant life, an early and most disagreeable death- 
Them I derided. 

A trooper was shivering on the platform when, in 
the small hours of the night, the train pulled up at 
Regina. He took me to the town detachment, where 
I slept, and in the morning showed me the way to 
Barracks. The Plain was a tawny ocean, flecked with 
a foam of snowdrifts, from which a thin mist rolled, 
and broke on what seemed to be a black reef perhaps 
three miles away. As I drew nearer, following the 
trail, I saw a fleck of color blaze out above low roofs, 
[ 32 ] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TROOPER 
the Union Jack, and heard the faint clear cry of a 
bugle. 

What most appealed to me in the next few days was 
an extraordinary new phenomenon in nature, the 
regular recurrence of meals ; and when, after a fort- 
night, I tried to put on my old civilian waistcoat, ib 
would not button, either above or below. I was choked 
with sheer glory at wearing the Imperial scarlet, faint 
with pride when I first walked into town. The drills, 
" stables," " fatigues," " rides," and " guards," were 
alike splendid new games at which I was always a 
duffer, but ever so willing. No longer hopeless, no 
longer sinking from depth to depth, relieved of the 
old anxiety as to food, I began shyly to uncurl, to find 
vent in those engaging puppyisms which are always 
so charming in the young. When I was arrested for 
fighting, the weapons proved to have been billiard- 
balls. 

In this community of the Police every life was a 
vivid romance in the making; every man in the bar- 
rack-room was hero, fool, or villain, generally all three, 
in some quaint tragedy or ghastly comedy. 

The man who slept next to me on the right was a 
waif raised in some wandering circus as a contortion- 
[33] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

ist. The man on my left was eldest son of a marquis. 
In the opening chapter I told an anecdote of Tom the 
Whisky-Runner. He was a larrikin in an Australian 
mining-camp, then tramp and sailor, before he be- 
came whisky-runner, and soldier, — his bed was in the 
corner of that room, — and now he is a prosperous 
farmer. 

Dutchy Koerner was a horse-thief and a desperate 
criminal, driven into the Mounted Police as his only 
refuge from justice. Afterwards he deserted, and was 
riding into the United States on a stolen horse when 
he met with a Vigilance Committee out on the war- 
path after desperadoes. He had always with us pro- 
fessed his contempt for Vigilantes, but this Com- 
mittee was certainly most efficient, for they recognized 
Dutchy and hanged him. That same Committee 
called later at a ranch owned by two of our ex-con- 
stables. In the corral the Committee found a bunch 
of stolen cattle, and without formality dragged one 
of the partners out of the house and hanged him. 
Then the other ex-policeman rode in from the Plains, 
and, knowing nothing of the lynching, hailed the Vig- 
ilantes with a shout of welcome. " Glad to see you, 
l)oys ! Been out a-hunting for you. Me and my 
[34] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TROOPER 

partner have rounded up a bunch of stock that must 
have been stolen somewheres ; we've got them waiting 
for you in the corral. Why, boys, what's wrong with 
you ? " And then he saw ! 

Smith's father — that was not the name — was 
usually addressed as His Excellency, and Smith began 
his career as a naval officer. Twice he won medals for 
saving life, and his rise in the service was rapid until 
a private calamity unseated his reason. Time healed 
that wound, and as a trooper in an irregular corps he 
served in one of the early South African campaigns. 
Again his promotion was rapid, so that he was cap- 
tain and adjutant of his regiment, when in a memo- 
rable engagement he was shot through the skull. He 
lived, recovered his physical health, and was heard of 
next as a farmer in Manitoba. Of course he failed, 
the English gentleman being as much at home on a 
farm as an eagle in a henroost. So he enlisted in the 
Mounted Police, and the very first day recognized an 
officer on the parade ground. That officer had been 
a trooper under him in South Africa, and now their 
positions were reversed. The officer in question was 
latterly one of the brilliant squadron leaders of 
Strathcona's Horse. 

[35] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

When I joined the Police, Smith was a corporal, 
but he got into trouble for some casual peppering of 
recruits with a service revolver. When we met he was 
a prisoner, I was prisoner's escort, herding him about 
with a gun, and we became friends. We served to- 
gether in the campaign which followed, and after- 
wards Smith deserted. He enlisted in the United 
States Cavalry and deserted that. It was as a tramp 
that he came back to Canada, and Corporal John 
Mackie, the novelist, befriended him at Willow Creek 
in the Cypress. From thence he managed to drag 
himself northwards to Fort Saskatchewan, and there, 
at the Police Hospital, was tended in his last days by 
one of his old comrades. " I have fought my last 
battle, Harry," he whispered, just at the end, " my 
last battle — and lost." Then the poor tramp was 
given a captain's funeral, and men who had served 
with him fired the last salute. So ended the tale of a 
man with a broken heart. 

In later years I kept record of what befell the men 
I served with, so far as facts were known. The re- 
sults are too terrible to publish. So many gallant 
gentlemen were killed or frozen to death on duty, were 
slain, in battle, or died by their own hand; but still a 
[36] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TROOPER 

much larger number have left the ranks of the Lost 
Legion and become successful men ; one has gained 
the Victoria Cross, a few made fortunes in the Klon- 
dike, and most of all were the retired, who left no 
records at all, and are quietly prospering. 

Winter came to the Plains, not furtively as in Eng- 
land, seeking out weak lungs, but brilliant, terrible, 
and bewildering. First came the snow, providing 
most tenderly for the living seeds in the earth. Then, 
under a cloudless sky, demoniac hurricanes swept up 
the powdery snow in blinding sheets from the ground, 
covering all trails, hiding all landmarks, so that a 
man caught even between his house and his barn was 
like to be lost and perish. 

In one blizzard I was sent with three prisoners — a 
white man, a negro, and an Indian — to carry lamps 
from the canteen to the mess-roon. Midway between 
the buildings we got lost, and I drew my revolver to 
be ready if either of my charges tried to bolt. They 
chaffed me gently, knowing that the weather was so 
much more deadly than my marksmanship. I put the 
Indian ahead, and he smelt the way for us to the near- 
est buildings. A few days later such a blizzard as that 
swept through a Dakota township, and a hundred and 
[37] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

seventy people were frozen to death, including the 
mistress of the school with all her pupils. 

Only less treacherous were the calm days, forty, 
fifty, sixty degrees below zero, when the still dry air 
was like a draught of champagne, and one went wild 
with sheer delight at being alive. Then came peril 
for travelers, for the least disorder of the body with- 
draws blood from the skin, the cold, striking un- 
noticed, may strike deep without the slightest warn- 
ing of pain, and a frozen man be only conscious of 
languor, the delicious languor of the last sleep. 

Late in December the Northern outposts had to be 
re-enforced, and as twenty volunteers were called for, 
we were all crazy to go. Each of the men finally 
selected harnessed his horse to a sleigh, which carried 
him, with his rations, forage, and bedding. The officer 
and the senior sergeant took their wives in a covered 
sleigh, with a stove and plenty of furs. It was on the 
third day out that the expedition got lost on the Salt 
Plains, and traveled far on into the night before they 
found the trail, which had been drifted over by a 
recent storm. The night was cold, some sixty odd 
degrees below zero, so that everybody was more or less 
frozen and exhausted, when " Sheppey," a little Eng- 
[38] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TROOPER 

lishman, found that his chum, " the Doctor," was 
missing. Sheppey went back three miles before he 
found the Doctor, badly frozen and stuck in a drift, 
with his horse entirely done for. Sheppey changed 
horses with the Doctor, and, having saved his life, 
most generously punched his head. Broad awake, 
and resentful, the Doctor told Sheppey that another 
man besides himself was lost, and the heroic lad set out 
to find him also. Tracking by starlight miles out from 
the trail of the .expedition, Sheppey caught up at last 
with Crook, who was busy chasing a planet and would 
not desist from the hunt. Moreover, Crook was a bad 
man to handle, standing six foot six, of gigantic build, 
and mad with delirium. The giant was fresh then 
from the West Indies, where he had been yachting, 
his blood was impoverished, and, running beside his 
sleigh, he had become exhausted, then drove on in a 
profuse perspiration which froze upon his skin. 

Little Sheppey jumped on top of the giant and 
punched his head, but though the fight was prolonged 
and furious, Crook was beyond all rousing. Nobody 
knows how Sheppey managed to get his comrade back 
to the expedition, but, like a tug towing a battleship, 
he came into camp triumphant. The Doctor was 
[39] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

nursed for a fortnight at a relay station of the stage 
line, but Crook lay for forty days between life and 
death before his brain cleared and he rallied. A 
special relief party brought him back to us at Regina, 
and it was then that we heard the first rumors of the 
war-storm brewing in the North. 



[40] 



rv 

WAR 

IN the big barrack-room, while the stove glowed 
red-hot, and the ice of the water-pails melted, we 
would spend the evening at cards, or cleaning our 
harness for a parade, until the bugle called First Post. 
Then as we rolled down our blankets on the trestle- 
beds, the whole score of us would be moved by a com- 
mon impulse to Bedlam games, wherein we hurtled to- 
gether like wild boars; or a peaceful time, when we 
made Fat Thompson sing, or our elders waxed con- 
tentious in high debate, while we Ring-Tailed Snort- 
ers of less than two years' service were not allowed to 
speak. 

Mutiny, the teamster, would begin the trouble with 
some random wager. 

" Say, I've got fifteen dollars that says there'll be 
war within the month." 

That would rouse the Corporal in charge. 
" Oh, go soak your head ! I say war ! Why, where's 
[41] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

the grass for their ponies? The nitchies can't fight 
us before June." 

" Ahm thinking," purred a Scotch voice, " that 
ye're no calculating on this Louis Riel — forbye his 
veesions " 

" Visions be damned ! " saith Mutiny. " This here 
RiePs a practical man with his tail a-waving. Look 
what he done on Red River in 'seventy." 

"Ran like a rabbit!" the Corporal jeered at 
Mutiny. " Him and his hull blooming Republic, when 
tljey seen Wolseley's column — couldn't see their tails 
for dust. You ask old Forty-twa — he was right 
there." 

" Ahm thinking " began the Black Watch vet- 
eran. But Mutiny called his fifteen dollars to witness 
that we should have war before the end of March. 

" Why, look a-here," — he ate tobacco, and spat at 
long range into the hissing stove, — " here's Riel up 
North right now, with four or five hundred half- 
breeds, old buffalo runners just spoiling for a scrap 
with us. Poundmaker is getting proud, and Big 
Bear has his tail up — which means that we've got to 
fight the whole outfit of Crees. They've sent runners 
to old Crowfoot, and the Blackfoot Confederation's 
[42] 



WAR 

dancing. The Sioux are out to howl ; and if that aint 
enough, there's them Fenian Irish outfits ready to 
jump in when our fur flies. You bet your socks there's 
all of five thousand men, and d'ye think they're going 
to sit purring till we send for an army ? Not much L 
Who says they'll wait for grass ? " 

" Oh, go away and die ! " said the Corporal. 

" Here ! Dollars talk ! " cried Mutiny, gesticulat- 
ing with a roll of notes. " Plank down your iron dol- 
lars. I'll stake you even money we get wiped out." 

" Ahm thinking this Louis Riel is a'most as windy 
as auld Mutiny. He'll no' come up to the scratch, 
waur luck, for we've too mony men." 

" Hear him ! " yelped Mutiny. " Too many men ! 
We're not five hundred strong, and half of us a heap 
of Piebiters ! Just look at 'em grinning in them five 
beds there — one grin to each bed. Oh, you wolf- 
mouthed, redded, tear-a-bone-out, buck-hero toughs 
of the wild Plains ! " 

Last Post was sounding, and the Orderly Corporal 
had come in, who stood awaiting Mutiny's leisure be- 
fore he called the roll. 

" Er — excuse me, Mistah — er Mutiny, I won't de- 
tain you. Answer your names ! " 
[43] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

He called the roll, then read the Orders — all hands 
warned for the North. The war had come ! 

The French-Indian half-breeds of the West, a for- 
lorn remnant of the lost Empire of France, had never 
fully consented to English rule. Working faithfully 
as voyageurs and hunters for the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany, they cherished still their ancient hatred of our 
race, and had in 1814-16 and again in 1870 revolted 
in open war against the advancing settlements of 
Canada. Of late years they had built their cabins 
six hundred miles be3 r ond the last Canadian village in 
the West, in a lonely glade beside the South Saskatche- 
wan River. Again our marching Empire had rolled 
past them, and now a surly Government denied them 
a title to their farms. So in their discontent they 
listened to an orator of their own blood, a romantic 
visionary claiming inspiration from on high to set up 
a Heavenly Republic. Louis Riel told his people to 
wear once more their old-time deerskin shirts, to take 
their rifles for war. The white settlers and the 
Mounted Police were to be driven away, the bison 
would come back to the Plains, and they with the 
Indian tribes should live at peace — a Republic of the 
Hunters. 

[44] 



WAR 

They were simple as they were brave, and, asking 
for a sign, were told by their leader that on the 17th 
of March he would blot out the sun and make total 
darkness over the whole earth. 

All this came true, as he had prophesied, and the 
Ciee nation joined Riel with over two thousand war- 
riors. The Blackfeet wavered, roused by Riel's mes- 
sengers, chaffed by the men of our little helpless de- 
tachments. The danger would be awful if they rose, 
for the settlers had scarcely a rifle among them, and 
our regiment was weak even for its work in time of 
peace. To the East lay a thousand miles of forest, 
shutting us off from help until the new railroad was 
finished, and to the West six hundred miles of moun- 
tains barring us out from succor. Our chief, 
Colonel Irvine, scratched his sorrel head, and knew 
it was very awkward. How was he to find an 
army to suppress this Heavenly Republic in the 
North? 

He scratched up ninety-six men. On Sunday 
(17th March, 1885), while we were all in a rush of 
preparation, the sun went black, the stars shone out 
from the noon sky, and we had to stop work in the 
darkness, knowing that this total eclipse was the sign 
[45] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

for the fighting tribes to rise, for the massacre of our 
far-strung settlements. 

We had to cross three hundred miles of unbroken 
snowfield, where there was not an ounce of food for 
horse or man, and that little fact reduced our army 
to a convoy of sleighs laden with forage. We saw 
the Colonel's sorrel top go roan with worry, but what 
with his discipline, his horsemanship, and perfect 
service of scouts, we made that three-hundred-mile 
march at an average of forty-two miles a day, through 
a hostile country, without being cut to pieces. Gen- 
tlemen of the Imperial Army, please note that record. 

We marched with scouts ahead, vedettes in our front, 
then an advance-guard and rear-guard of cavalry 
covering the long procession of sleighs. My place, 
as a mere recruit, was with the transport. We made 
our fourth camp on the Salt Plains, drenched all of 
us to the skin with a sopping thaw. We set up the 
tents, wrung out our boots, and slept; but at 3.30 
a. m., when reveille sounded, the weather had changed, 
it was twenty-five degrees below zero, and our clothes 
were stiff ice from the waist downwards. Each man 
had his moccasins — skin-shoes for cold weather — 
ready in the pockets of his buffalo overcoat; and all 
[46] 



WAR 

of us were ready except two. The Scout-Interpreter 
had been careless, and lost a big toe. 

I was ignorant of the climate, had not kept my 
moccasins within reach, could not get them out of the 
transport, and spent fifteen minutes dragging on my 
frozen cavalry boots. When we marched I thought 
it was cramp which gripped me from the knees to the 
heels, and though it was difficult to move, I trotted 
beside a sleigh, wondering what caused me so much 
pain. My little growls would have done no good to 
anybody, and where all were uncomfortable it was 
better not to complain. After about eighteen miles 
I lay on the sleigh, and the fellows told me that it 
would serve me right if I froze. Would I freeze like 
a man rather than run behind like a dog? Then they 
belabored me with advice. 

At the noon halt I was told off on picket to guard 
camp, but, not feeling well enough, went sick. 

The Hospital Sergeant found that the chafing of 
the frozen leather as I ran had almost severed the toes 
of the right foot, and that I was solidly frozen up to 
the calves, of no more use to the Colonel. 

Chafing with snow would have rubbed away the tis- 
sues, heat would have resulted in death by gangrene; 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

so for seven hours of the afternoon march I sat on a 
sleigh-box luxurious, with six ounces of brandy inside, 
and my feet in a bucket of water kept cool with snow. 
After supper came a general collapse from shock, and 
the pain which results from a scalding. That night 
the officers gave their tent to the sick, for despite the 
use of goggles we had several men already totally 
blind from the glare on ice-crusted snow. Next day 
there were sixty-five of us blind because of a hot mist 
rising from the snow glare. I went blind that day. 

Some of our civilian frieghters, unable to keep the 
pace, fell astern and were captured; and the stage 
station which we reached that night had just been 
sacked by the rebels. Our camp was pitched as usual, 
but with a man in each tent to drop the canvas if a shot 
were fired, and a third of our whole force on the alert. 
By day we were helplessly blind, but at night the pain 
is eased and one is able to see. From my place in a 
corner of the log-cabin I watched the Colonel seated 
before a red blaze of fire, while a scout gave him 
news of an ambush prepared for us at Batoche. There 
was bare ground on the trail ahead, at the hill by the 
Church of St. Antoine, a place very difficult for 
sleighs, the woods on either side being lined with rifle- 
[48] 



WAR 

pits, and the enemy's whole force in waiting. Would 
the Colonel be pleased to step in ? Months afterwards 
I found in Kiel's private diary the note of which this 
is a rough translation : " The Spirit of God speaks 
to me concerning the Police . . . ' if you take that 
road there,' the Holiness designated the road which 
passed under the Church of St. Antoine, going up- 
wards, ' you will yet be in time to take them. There 
must be no resting until you reach that hill.' The 
Spirit of God pointed to the hill which is just beyond 
Batoche." 

We struck camp at midnight and marched, and no 
man's hand must leave the grip of his carbine, no one 
must speak above a whisper, while we crept past the 
ambush by a different trail, and all day long drove 
on through sparkling, frosted woodlands and white 
glades, a very quiet, suffering little army, for the most 
part blind. We were the forlorn hope of Western 
Canada, on us depended thousands of women and 
children marked out for butchery, outrage, death at 
the stake, and every nameless horror of Indian war. 
I think the Spirit of God was partly with us that 
day. 

As it was cold, a man was told off to keep me awake 
[49] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

in the sleigh-bed by punching me in the ribs ; it would 
not have been safe to sleep. 

In my little-puppy days I had read books of adven- 
ture about nice clean boys, dressed in buckskin suits, 
who scalped the Redskin, escaped from packs of wolves, 
and had thrilling times in canoes along the Saskatche- 
wan. That day, as we crossed the ice on the South 
Branch of the Saskatchewan, I must needs have a look 
at the romantic river, so with reluctant fingers dragged 
my eyelids open for just one glance. 

Now I must try to explain the shape of the seat of 
war into which we had entered. Two rivers born in 
the Rocky Mountains come rolling eastward across the 
Plains, and after a course of seven hundred miles 
these two branches meet to form the Great Saskatche- 
wan. Above their junction, up the South Branch, 
was Batoche, the Rebel capital near which Mr. Riel 
had politely arranged an ambush. Leaving that 
astern, we crossed the South Branch, to enter the coun- 
try between the rivers, then headed for Prince Albert, 
the threatened settlement, upon the North Branch, 
distant some fifty miles. To the west of that village, 
up the North Branch, was Fort Carlton, a post of the 
Hudson's Bay Company, held by D Troop of the 
[50] 



WAR 

Mounted Police, with some Volunteers, and commanded 
by Superintendent Crozier. These three positions, 
Batoche, Prince Albert, and Fort Carlton, formed a 
triangle, the connecting trails being each about fifty 
miles long. 

We reached Prince Albert late, after a sixty-mile 
march, and as our advance-guard rode down the vil- 
lage trail the sentries of the local Volunteers did us 
the honor to present arms, standing, with many 
blushes at the salute, under a fire of chaff. For five 
miles we followed the bank of the North Saskatchewan, 
among log-houses aglow with warmth and comfort, 
and so reached our camping-place at last, the detach- 
ment barracks of the Mounted Police. There I was 
left in company with several men who were still totally 
blind, while after a day's rest the expedition marched 
to relieve Fort Carlton. 

The rebels from Batoche, reluctant in a blue funk, 
were marching on Carlton, the Colonel was burning 
trail to get there first, while Crozier had to sit in the 
fort, eating his tongue until re-enforcements came. He 
had hoped for our column on the 24th, waited through 
the 25th, and saw the dawn break on the 26th ; forbid- 
den in plain terms to leave the fort, thinking the coun- 
[51] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

try lost unless he struck, mad to get out and fight, 
amazed at seeing himself behave so prettily. Then, 
in presence of the whole garrison, the Hudson's Bay 
Company factor called Crozier a coward. After that 
this hot Irish gentleman could bear no more, broke 
loose from discipline, threw his own career to the winds, 
and wanted to get killed. 

He had sent out a party to get supplies from Duck 
Lake trading-post before it was seized by the advanc- 
ing rebels, but the enemy rolled back that detachment 
in headlong flight to the fort. Instantly Crozier 
sounded " Boot and Saddle," paraded his sixty Police 
and thirty-five Volunteers, and marched. The man 
who had called him a coward stayed behind. 

Some eight miles south of the fort, Crozier's party 
met the whole force of rebels marching on Carlton. 

The Hunters were not quite ready, but must have 
time to surround the white men and get under cover 
before they began to fight. That is why Chief Beardy 
of the Crees came strolling up to Crozier with a flag 
of truce. There was much talking, for the chief stood 
making an oration, and Joe Macka\ T interpreted, and 
Crozier bent down in his saddle, listening thought- 
fully. Slowly the Indians and half-breeds were get- 
[52] 



WAR 

ting into position, forming a horseshoe line around 
the Police, until Beardy got tired of his oration, and, 
speaking still of peace, tried to snatch the Interpreter's 
carbine. Joe pulled his revolver and riddled the 
Indian with lead. 

Now the surrounding woods began to spit flames 
at the Police as they lay behind their sleighs drawn 
up across the road. Crozier swung round in the 
saddle. 

" Fire, boys ! " he yelled. 

" Please, sir, you're right in the line of fire ! " said 
the seven-pounder gun. 

" Oh, never mind me ! " answered Crozier ; and the 
fight began, the first round from the seven-pounder 
wiping out seven rebels. 

" Most unfair," said the half-breeds, because, what 
with the discharge and an explosive shell, " it shot 
twice every time it was fired." 

Again the gun was loaded, this time with the shell 
first and the powder afterwards. The Mounted Police 
were never quite at home with artillery, and of course 
"bhe " beastly thing jammed." The horses had been 
led to the rear, the men fought from cover of the 
sleighs, officers standing; and though there was 
[53] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

nothing to shoot at but smoke, the well on an Indian 
farm near by was afterwards found jammed to the 
brim with dead bodies. As the position became more 
and more desperate, our Volunteers made a gallant 
attempt to charge, but the snow was five feet deep 
and they were butchered. 

The snow was getting all bloody, an advance was 
impossible, and the enemy were closing down on the 
rear when, after twenty-five minutes, Crozier gave the 
order to retreat. The horses were shot down as they 
were harnessed, barely sleighs enough could be saved 
to carry eight wounded men, and twelve were left dead 
in the drifts when at last the retreat began. One man, 
out of sight behind some bushes, dragging himself 
through the drifts with a broken leg, saw the rear- 
guard covering the sleighs fall back round a curve of 
the road. He was left behind. 

This Newitt was a Canadian, a shop assistant from 
Prince Albert, where his mother lived ; and, curiously 
astray from his line of business, the gallant youngster 
made his peace with Heaven. Drowsy with pain, he 
saw an Indian stand over him with clubbed rifle to dash 
out his brains, and his hand was shattered warding off 
the blow. Again the rifle swung, but was caught away 
[54] 



WAR 

just at the last moment by a half-breed who knew the 
lad. After that Newitt lay for ten weeks a prisoner 
before he was rescued, but the Republic of the Hunters 
obeyed the laws of war with punctilious courtesy, and 
their honor was not stained by any outrage. The 
Indians plundered, burned, scalped, and massacred, 
but not those wild children of the old French Empire. 

Very slowly, for the sake of the wounded, Crozier's 
forlorn retreat moved down on Carlton, and came to 
the fort just as the Colonel's relief column swept in 
through the gates. The man who called Crozier a 
coward was there to receive them. He had set the 
Plains on fire. 

Carlton was a fort of the Hudson's Bay Company 
where the buffalo runners in old times delivered their 
meat, to be carried away by yearly canoe-fleets bound 
for the ultimate North. The little fort lay in the 
valley of the North Saskatchewan, commanded on all 
sides from the edge of the Plains above. In view of 
the peril of the Prince Albert settlement, Carlton could 
not be held, but the stores of enormous value were 
not to be left to the enemy. On the 27th the garrison 
was invited to sack the shop for their own benefit ; the 
saddles were chopped to pieces, the provisions were 
[55] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

soaked with petroleum, the rifles broken, and all things 
made ready for flight. A mortally wounded man died 
and was buried, patrols were fired on close outside the 
fort, there were wild rumors of treason, hourly alarms. 
So the day passed. 

At midnight some refugee women lighted a stove in 
the gate-house — and, above, the naked stove passed 
through an upper room. There the Sergeant-Ma j or, 
preparing mattresses for the wounded, had left a pile 
of hay. That hay caught fire. 

In the last chapter I mentioned " the Doctor " badly 
frozen on the Salt Plains. He, the son of an Eng- 
lish General Officer, was Hospital Orderly tending two 
desperately wounded men in the next room. When 
he found that the house was on fire, he knew well that 
these men must be burned to death in their beds unless 
he kept back the flames, and made such a battle for 
their lives that both escaped in time. The Orderly 
had his face burned so that nobody might know who 
he was, but he remained on duty quietly tending the 
wounded. 

The gate-house was in flames, and the fire extended 
swiftly until three sides of the fort were burning. 
Sleighs were being loaded with wounded and refugees ; 
[56] 



WAR 

horses, half mad with fright, were put in harness ; the 
ground was shaken with explosions, the flames, tower- 
ing far aloft, were giving signal to the enemy; and 
still two hundred and fifty people were locked in that 
burning square until the ringing axes finished their 
work, and a road was opened through the old stockade. 
And then began the night retreat on Prince Albert. 

Within twelve hours after Duck Lake fight a scout 
rode down into Prince Albert, warning us there to 
be prepared for the worst. There could be no doubt 
now that the fighting tribes would rise : the Crees who 
surrounded us, the Assiniboines in the South, the rang- 
ing bands of Sioux, the terrible Blackfoot confedera- 
tion. In those days Prince Albert was the most 
northerly village in the New World ; seventeen hun- 
dred miles from civilized Canada, seventeen hundred 
miles removed from succor. Already the rich and 
populous settlement was being abandoned, the village 
was jammed with refugees; and although the Colonel, 
in passing, had arranged for some sort of defense, our 
Volunteers were fierce rather than formidable. They 
were arming with shot-guns and sticks. 

When, in the dead of night, the news of Duck Lake 
aroused us all from sleep, in frantic haste merchants. 
[57] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

and clergy, doctors and clerks, began to haul firewood, 
good four-foot logs, from the backyards, which were 
piled into most formidable walls. Within ten hours 
they built a fort of refuge, inclosing the Presbyterian 
Church and Manse, the only brick buildings then in 
the village. By noon the work was finished, the women 
and children were under shelter ; indeed, as I was car- 
Tied in from the barracks, I saw the Hudson's Bay 
post, together with all the houses, abandoned to its 
fate. 

A civilian sentry presented arms to me at the gate, 
an honor due only to the dead, so I chaffed him — we 
always chaffed those wonderful town guards. Within 
the stockade there was confusion of heaped-up mer- 
chandise, but that was peaceful compared with the 
church, which was mess-house, main-guard, women's 
quarters, powder magazine, and nursery, all in a space 
of thirty feet by forty. I was laid in the left-hand 
corner of the dais, and from thence, whenever I got 
hungry, I would send little boys out foraging. I met 
two of those same boys in 1901 as veteran troopers 
returned from the South African War, and they told 
me that the earliest memory of their lives was that 
fort of refuge. 

[58] 



WAR 

Through the long, grim hours of that day and the 
next, I watched from my corner quaint scenes of un- 
failing comedy. Each mother, the moment she found 
a camping-place under some table, set up her house- 
keeping, made a complete home, gravely washed her 
babies, solemnly smacked them, put them to bed, 
crooned them to sleep with song, and did her hair. 
With her mouth full of hairpins she would protest 
most vigorously if some chance Volunteer, dining at 
the table overhead, poured tea down the back of her 
neck, or protruded muddy feet into her parlor. Rival 
households disparaged one another through a sus- 
pended shawl; friendly families gossiped with only 
the legs of the table erect between them ; and as to the 
scandal — I would blush to the roots of my hair. 

The Bishop — Saskatchewan Jack of glorious mem- 
ory — abandoned by his panic-stricken court, got so 
lonely at Immanuel College that at last he loaded his 
treasure, a case marked " Bibles," on the Episcopal 
sleigh, and came to seek refuge with the rest. Well 
I remember his Lordship swinging his short legs as 
he sat on the corner of a table eating a hard-tack 
biscuit, while in impressive measures he chanted the 
iniquities of the Mounted Police. One would think 
[59] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

that in a time of general peril these profane troopers 
might shrink at least from open robbery, but even his 
case of Bibles had not been respected. I may men- 
tion that our boys of the Prince Albert detachment 
found something more than spiritual consolation 
within that case mafked " Bibles," and were fattening 
on the luxuries of the Episcopal larder while his Lord- 
ship fasted in church. 

As to the Presbyterian minister *he stood in his pul- 
pit that evening without any impetus to preach. A 
heap of loose gunpowder lay on the dais beside him, 
from which he served rations to a string of Volunteers 
as they filed past him, peaceably smoking their pipes. 
The space under the church floor was rumored to hold 
thirty barrels of powder, to be touched off in case the 
Indians succeeded in breaching our stockade. 

The women gossiped cheerily as they washed up 
the dishes after supper, the swinging lamps were 
lighted as the daylight waned, men waiting their turn 
for guard sat gingerly nursing unaccustomed rifles, 
and the little children were playing at being Red 
Indians while their mothers tried to hunt them off to 
bed. Such was the calm before the big storm broke. 

Some sixteen miles from the village, two weary 
[60] 



WAR 

scouts came to anchor on a deserted farm. They had 
fed their horses, strangled and cooked a fowl, and 
were just sitting down to supper when a couple of 
half-breed rebels strolled in through the kitchen door. 
The smell of the chicken appealed to them also, for 
they were very hungry ; but, as lying is smoother than 
war, they sequestered that supper without any needless 
bloodshed, merely announcing the white men prisoners 
*nd themselves the advance-guard of Riel's army. 
The two scouts paused for no details, but with touch- 
ing credulity believed, and bolted through the window, 
leaving their supper to the enemy. They mounted 
their horses, lashed themselves into hysterics as they 
rode, and an hour later came at full gallop into the 
village, yelling that the enemy had arrived. 

The Carlton garrison had entered Prince Albert at 
sundown. Camped at the detachment barracks, the 
men, worn out with seventy hours on duty, just saw 
to the comfort of their horses, then went to sleep where 
they dropped. There was no rest for them, for at 
that moment the alarm rang out which was to keep 
them on parade all night ^guarding the- fort of refuge. 

From my corner in the church I was lazily watching 
the minister as, with queer clerical gestures and a tin 
[61] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

cup, he administered rations of powder. By my feet 
sat one of our corporals, still blind from the glare of 
the snow, and he predicted disaster at intervals. " I 
could see," said he, " but for these beastly lamps " — 
for snow-blind men can use their eyes at night. 

A man rushed in at the door howling " To arms ! " 
The bell in the cupola clashed out a wild alarm ; the 
Corporal was fighting over my legs with a Volunteer 
who had tried to steal his carbine; somebody with a 
revolver was threatening to shoot everybody else who 
was frightened; a mob of men were running about 
waving their rifles and screaming ; hundreds of women 
and children were swarming in for shelter; and over 
all the din I could hear what seemed like the clear, in- 
sistent rattle of musketry. It was only hammering; 
the removal of a barn obstructed the view from 
the ramparts, but it made very passable musketry. 
The women were having a good cry, the girls 
howled, but the little boys were pleased all to pieces. 
Two bright-eyed youngsters promised to filch me a 
gun. 

As for me, in the first crash of the panic my heart 
made one big leap of fear, but, as I could not run 
about, I had no occasion to howl. From the window 
[62] 



WAR 

overhead there might be some decent shooting out 
over the rampart, so, taking my crippled revolver, I 
tried to climb up ; tried and tried again, but always 
came tumbling down. If one had never made a whole- 
sale ass of one's self, but always behaved with pro- 
priety, how deadty dull it would be to look back on 
life ! That never yet bored me. 

Over three hundred women now thronged the church, 
and, seized with a sudden self-consciousness, I 
groveled in horrified concealment under my rug 
against the wall. Then, when only my blushes were 
visible, six women and seven children camped on my 
bed. Perhaps it was the scarlet uniform jacket 
which brought that distracted fold to me with frantic 
appeals for help ; and of course, for my honor, I lied, 
vowing to restore their lost husbands, brothers, and 
sons, yea, sires and uncles also, if they would onhy 
be good and keep quiet. 

Slowly the tumult lulled to exhausted calm, broken 
at times even then with yells of fright when somebody 
smashed glass with a bayonet to save us from suffoca- 
tion, or one of those blessed Volunteers let off his 
demon rifle, boring a hole through the roof. At last 
I saw a man stand at the door with tidings, and 
[63] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

through an intense hush of expectation a wave of 
whispering carried his news through the church. 
The enemy were still some miles away from the 
village. 

The dawn broke after a while, and it was Palm 
Sunday. 

There had been a bewildering rush of events: the 
march to the North, Duck Lake fight, the burning 
and evacuation of Carlton, the retreat on Prince 
Albert, the great night panic. Afterwards there was 
a lull of seven weeks, in which no news reached the 
village. We did not take ourselves too seriously. 
Ours was only a little affair of outposts, whereas Eng- 
land was on the instant verge of war against Russia. 
In presence of that Titanic argument our sorest griev- 
ance was lack of newspapers. 

Poor Louis Riel saw visions and dreamed dreams, 
communed with angels, and wrote it all down in his 
diary. His Republic of the Hunters, wholly engrossed 
with thought, sat in a state of enchantment perfectly 
harmless. But the tribes had risen and wrapped our 
settlements in flames, spreading devastation for sev- 
eral hundred miles across the Plains. In the whole of 
Central Saskatchewan we had at last but two strong- 
[64] 



WAR 

holds left, where the settlers were in refuge at Prince 
Albert and Battleford. 

Then came the turning of the tide. Those old 
allies, the Cowboys and the Police, secured the South- 
western stock-range and all Alberta by soothing the 
riotous nerves of the Blackfoot nation. Thence, 
marching to the relief of Battleford, they engaged 
and defeated the Crees. An expedition of five thou- 
sand men came up from Eastern Canada, which, after 
surmounting many difficulties, gave battle to the 
enemy at Batoche, and in a three-days' siege wiped out 
the Republic of the Hunters. And so, with occasional 
actions, swift, bloody, and conclusive, the tide of war 
rolled on into the very fastnesses of the Northern 
Forest, where the tribes at last dispersed. Riel sur- 
rendered to take his trial for treason felony ; and with 
many expressions of mutual regret we hanged him. 
The campaign was bitter shame for us of the Mounted 
Police, that we should have let our parishioners so get 
out of hand. 

It was late in May when our two troops from Prince 

Albert came down at last out of the Forest. The 

horses were dying of starvation, the men had lived 

for weeks by snaring rabbits, and the homeward 

[65] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

march dragged out long, hungry miles until one sum- 
mer day they came to the edge of the Plains. Then 
someone remembered : " Why, boys, it's the twenty- 
fourth ! " and he flung his sombrero in the air. " The 
twenty-fourth of May ! " cried a man behind him, as 
he sent a bullet whizzing through the hat : " Queen's 
Birthday, you fellows ! " Every hat went skywards, 
a royal salute with revolvers riddled them in the air, 
and all along the line rang out the National Anthem. 

So our bo3 r s rode home to us over prairies ablaze 
with flowers ; steamers swung past us down the North 
Saskatchewan, deep with victorious regiments home- 
ward bound ; our long patrols went out to scour the 
Plains, to fight destroying fires in long grass, to ex- 
ecute justice, to vindicate the Peace; and then the 
mighty winter came roaring down, and the white 
months went by until a year had rolled over our heads 
since Duck Lake fight. 

We had an understanding among ourselves that 
compulsory church parades were opposed to the spirit 
of religion. We would walk three miles to attend free 
evensong, but forced matins were a duet between the 
officer commanding and the Bishop; and he who re- 
sponded, sang, or offered up real coins, must be dipped 
[66] 



WAR 

in the ice-girt river. But when on the anniversary of 
Duck Lake fight the Bishop called for an armed pa- 
rade to the memory of our dead, we responded, we 
sang, we offered up real coins. 

As for me, should I tell the annals of a bed, a pair 
of crutches, and a walking-stick? I think not. And 
yet of all my years in the Lost Legion that has most 
humors to look back upon. I had time to watch. 
Where each man's life was gemmed with bright ad- 
venture, and hundreds of lives made up the tangled 
skein, one threads through tortuous byways of 
memory, and has an epic for transcription, not a 
tale. 



[67] 



V 
PEACE 

THROUGH a long convalescence I had writ- 
ten bad verses, worse fiction, and sold in- 
credibly vile sketches in water-color, helped 
in the spelling and grammar of local journalism, and 
traded in cigars, giving credit, much to the amusement 
of the troop. 

Now with the spring of 1886, though the wound 
upon my foot refused to heal, I was able to wear 
boots, to walk, to ride, to do full duty and forget that 
I was an invalid. 

Ever since the war the regiment had been restive, 
and our chiefs reported the young men hard to hold, 
for troop after troop broke out in mutiny which had 
to be punished, and there was a heavy tale besides of 
suicides and desertions. We meant no harm, but we 
were all very young and nervous, with the blood burn- 
ing in our veins, and the whole pack of us, not know- 
ing what we wanted, were like young wolves howling 
for trouble. The officers did their best, drilling us 
[68] 



PEACE 

severely ; but then D Troop at Battlef ord must needs 
fall sick of typhoid, and Death swept through the 
tents. 

So our F Troop was called upon for thirty men 
to take over the Battleford district, and I got leave 
to join this detachment, hoping that change of air 
would heal my wound. 

For the first day's march there were farms at in- 
tervals, then came a belt of old sand-drift overgrown 
with pines, and beyond that, for a hundred miles or 
so, no house, no bush, but a swell of golden grass roll- 
ing away to violet distances. Clear down the }^ears 
comes the especial memory of Eagle Creek, where, 
sunk three hundred feet below the plains, there is a 
chain of pools, and an acre or so of meadow starred 
with the ashes of old campfires. The little foxes 
played there while it was cool before bedtime, a crane 
stood on one leg, hoping for a fish by way of supper, 
and the rim of the shadowed canyon glowed .orange 
against the sky. But when a cloud of dust arose be- 
hind the rim of the high plains, and the tramp of our 
horses sounded soft thunder-notes of warning, the 
little foxes crept with their mother to earth, and the 
crane flapped lazily away into the blue gloom of even- 
[69] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

ing. Presently a mounted man came out upon the 
edge of the ravine, the sun glowing chestnut upon his 
horse, flame upon the scarlet of his coat, star specks 
on bright accouterments. Then in half-sections came 
our twenty riders, each man with a carbine poised 
across the horn of the stock saddle, and many a point 
of glittering light upon his harness. At a word of 
command the riders dismounted to lead, while behind 
them appeared five wagons, each with driver and off 
man, and a pair of troopers, our rear-guard, waiting 
for the dust to abate before they followed down the 
breakneck hill. Our fellows were dressed in suits of 
brown canvas, or fringed deerskin, or gray flannel 
shirts with a silk kerchief round the neck, or an old 
red jacket, just as we pleased, long boots, sombrero 
hats, belts glittering with a line of brass cartridges, 
and big revolvers ready at the right hand. Ours were 
hard-featured, weather-beaten, dusty, great big men, 
with such clear, far-searching eyes, such pride of bear- 
ing, swaggering gallantry, and wild grace in the 
saddle that one despairs of ever, with words or colors, 
making a picture worthy of the theme. 

The teamsters got their wagons down the hill, 
shaving disaster by the very edge, and glad to reach 
[70] 



PEACE 

the bottom with unbroken bones. The mounted men 
had formed up, and were unsaddling; the wagons 
made a second line in their rear at forty-foot inter- 
vals, then a rope was stretched from wheel to wheel, 
to which each trooper tied his horse, before the teams 
were unharnessed. Meanwhile three off men had 
chosen a spot by some bushes, where an iron bar was 
set on a pair of uprights five feet apart, and, before 
the sound of axes had ceased in the bush behind, three 
full kettles swung over a roaring fire. A bell-tent 
was pitched for the officer commanding; the horses 
were watered, groomed, and fed ; then, at a merry call 
from the bugle, there was a general dash to the wag- 
ons for plates and cups, while knives were whipped 
from belt or boot-leg, ready for a general assault on 
fried bacon, hard biscuit, and scalding tea. After 
the meal there was a lively cross-fire of chaff, a cut- 
ting and burning of plug tobacco, and delicate gray 
smoke lifting towards the white stars which stole softly 
out of the twilight. 

Presently the horses were hobbled, turned out with 

great clatter of chain-links, and ungainly leaps, to 

grass, and placed in charge of a relief of pickets who 

must watch by turns through the long silence of the 

[71] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

night. Blankets were spread along the saddle line, or 
in or under wagons. First Post was sounded, Last 
Post was sounded, and then the sweet notes of the 
Regimental Call went throbbing against the hills, cry- 
ing to the stars : 

" That's all, boys. Dream of the girls you've lost. 
Lights Out." 

I think it was when the Great Bear stood on his 
head, when all the horses slept, and the slow dawn 
widened, that the dream-people came — mothers, sisters, 
lovers, the folk who wake in the night thinking of 
those they love, praying for their men. That is why 
the grass seemed all to be sparkling with little tears,, 
when the young day shone on Eagle Creek, and the 
bugler roused us with sudden triumphant music of 
the reveille. 

We rolled our blankets, washed, loaded the wag- 
ons, tended the horses, breakfasted, harnessed, 
marched, and before the sun had looked down over the 
canyon wall, the riders were breasting the hillside, the 
transport groaning across the meadow. 

When we came to the edge of the plain overlooking 
the Battle River, it was to camp among wild-flowers 
in a lusty wind, where we were safe from the con- 
[72] 



PEACE 

tagion of Fort Battleford. Thence daily we watched 
the funeral pageants creeping across the valley; or 
venturing, without leave, down to the fort, met 
ghostly white invalids, more or less insane, the vet- 
erans of D Troop. One of these, dressed for a burn- 
ing summer day in buffalo coat and lavender kid 
gloves, wept to me about the number of such gloves 
which he could buy if only he could get his month's 
pay safely invested. 

That night the poor beggar, breaking out of hos- 
pital, ran a couple of miles in his socks through the 
dewy grass, turned out a sleeping household, and com- 
plained to a brace of scared old maids that his feet 
were too cold for the journey. He died next day. 

One of our fellows, passing a house by the fort, 
heard an altercation, and through the open window 
saw Mrs. Billy, who, finding her husband, the canteen 
man, drunk, had knocked him down " and put the 
boots to him." She was discovered jumping on his 
chest, sobbing her heart out the while with grief at 
his misconduct. 

" Oh, Billy, and we might have such an 'appy 
5 ome ! " 

The officers were drinking, the troop was crazy, 
[73] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

and Dr. Miller, best loved of all men in the regiment, 
was seized with misgivings. He did not know if he 
had been quite sober while performing an operation, 
doubted if he was fit to live any longer, and went to 
his room. There he lay on his bed, put the muzzle 
of his carbine between his teeth, and touched the trig- 
ger with his great toe — but afterwards the men who 
came to clean the room found that, considerate to the 
end, this poor gentleman had spread sheets to make 
their task easy. 

It was well that D Troop should be sent away to 
get back health and reason on a seven-hundred-mile 
march across the Plains. 

They rode out past our camp very stiff and mili- 
tary, in full uniform, pink-and-white, like girls at a 
ball, uneasy under the stare of our hard men, with 
the band at their head, and a blaze of gold and scarlet. 

As they passed, C Troop came rolling in from 
Macleod to take their place, romping on fat horses, 
glowing with health, bubbling over with wickedness, 
gorgeous in cowboy or Indian dress, woolly shaps, 
long-fringed, deerskin shirts, red sashes, scalps taken 
in action; and one or two with their own squaws, 
horses, tepees — a retinue trailing astern of the pro- 
[74] 



PEACE 
cession. C sniffed, D blushed, F stared at that en- 
counter, the most splendid pageant I have ever seen 
on the Frontier. 

Our F Detachment now handed over the district, 
with custody of the Cree nation, to the relieving troop, 
and we rolled off across the Plains back to Prince 
Albert. 

The wild fruit was ripe, the autumn fires, sweeping 
for hundreds of miles, covered the land with a blue 
veil of smoke, the poplars were changing to tremu- 
lous gold, the pools were freezing, when our troop 
struck camp for winter quarters in some old log-huts. 
Then the officer commanding had me into his drawing- 
room, where I sat on the edge of a chair, too nervous 
to remove my forage-cap. Was it quite honest, he 
asked gently, for me to take full pay for half 
service ? 

I did not care, so long as I might serve. 

Was it quite wise, he suggested, to serve with an 
open wound draining away my strength? 

I was never very wise. So the words were spoken, 

and by wagon and coach I was sent down to Regina. 

The last stage of the journey was by train in the 

middle of the night, and perhaps I was a little be- 

[75] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

wildered at having met again with linen sheets, table- 
cloths, pretty waitresses, on reaching the edge of civ- 
ilization. The train, too, seemed to make a dreadful 
noise after the great silence in the North. The day- 
car was empty save for the sweet presence of an Eng- 
lish gentlewoman, marvelously fair; sitting up all 
night because only rich people could afford the lux- 
urious rear-end of the train. Humbly I ventured to 
offer her my rug, but she repulsed me, and I wanted 
to crawl away and die. 

Then, with a mad recklessness, I dared to approach 
again, offering up a novel to amuse her loneliness, but 
a glance sent me flying, put to utter confusion. The 
smart cavalry uniform, which might have pleased the 
waitresses at Troy, branded me with this lady as a 
Tommy cast by art magic into the wilderness, who 
had no right to be frantic with love at first sight, or 
make audacious worship. Perhaps the maid was shy, 
but the boy was projecting a dramatic suicide when 
the train slowed down for Regina. So was my first 
love nipped by a pitiless frost, and I went with my 
sore heart to report at headquarters. 

So the end came, and I sat very miserable on 
a bed while the Orderly Sergeant read General 
[76] 



PEACE 

Orders to men lying drowsy in the long barrack- 
room. 

" Regimental Number 1107 Constable Pocock, hav- 
ing been invalided, is hereby struck off the strength 
of the Force." 

As I sneaked out past the guard-house, a sentry 
challenged me: 

" Halt ! Who goes inhere? " 

" A friend." 

« Pass friend, all's well." 

All's well ! The bugles were crying to the night 
the long Last Post, the Plains reached away into im- 
measurable space, and I walked on through silence. 
The grass was starry with frost, the heavens one 
blaze of stars, but no lamp shone to guide me. Pres- 
ently, standing on the trail, I heard the far-off bugles 
softly crying, clear through the dark, the Regimental 
Call, and two last long-drawn notes that said " Lights 
Out!" 

And I turned again to my trail, with no lights to 
guide me. 



[77] 



VI 
THE GREAT PATROL 

BEFORE proceeding with the direct line of 
my story, let me tell how at a later day, hav- 
ing obtained permission from my old 
colonel, I rode with the great patrol. 

In the days following our campaign of 1885, when 
the Mounted Police numbered a thousand riders, a 
patrol was sent once a week which passed a letter west- 
ward, from outpost to outpost, District to District, 
until it had been carried from Manitoba to the Rocky 
Mountains. 

The trail followed a ridge which separates the 
rivers for Hudson's Bay from the waters which flow 
south to the Gulf of Mexico. It ran midway between 
the United States boundary and the Canadian Pacific 
Railway, and the riders were able from the high 
ground to observe a vast scope of country, that they 
might watch for smugglers, horse-thieves, strayed 
cattle, or wandering Indians, make the game laws a 
[78] 



THE GREAT PATROL 

fact, or turn out the settlements to fight a prairie 
fire. 

The Thousand-Mile Patrol consisted of one trooper, 
but if he had to sleep before he could reach a house, 
a second man attended with wagon or pack-horse to 
carry camp equipment. No lone rider is allowed out 
beyond a day's march, lest, meeting with some acci- 
dent, he perish miserably upon the Plains before he 
has been missed. My old chum, Reddy Her r on, was 
still spoken of in low tones in the days when I rode 
with the patrol. A capable man, well mounted, with 
food in his saddle-wallets, he had been sent out alone 
in the spring. The sun glare from the white drifts 
caught his eyes, and he went blind. He must have 
dismounted, they say, and the horse, frightened by his 
groping with outstretched arms, broke away, leaving 
him alone. He had his revolver left to him. 

At a winter camp of cowboys less than a mile away 
his shot was heard when he fired, his teeth clenched 
on the muzzle. There was no other way. 

Then there was Sergeant Parker, who got lost in 

winter somewhere on the Milk River Ridge, where a 

blizzard had wiped out the trail. For seven days he 

kept in the saddle, his brain chilled, his body warmed 

[79] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

by fever, his mind in exalted delirium seeing wonders 
and marvels beyond telling, until, with slow degenera- 
tion of the tissues, he sank at last to the ground in the 
deep sleep. The horse, badly swollen by the pressure 
of the girth, had made a living scratching out grass 
under the snow, and when his master fell remained be- 
side him. He had scratched out a grass hole all round 
the man, leaving him perched on a sharp ridge of 
snow, when, looking up, he saw travelers in the dis- 
tance. He ran to the sleigh, appealing with almost 
human entreaties until they followed him to his mas- 
ter's side. The man was saved. 

If there is peril both in winter and summer for a 
lone rider, one goes with a quiet mind in company. 
Indeed, after a week at Regina, abed with pleurisy 
and ulcerated jaws, I was mighty glad to escape in 
the saddle to the open Plains. Maladies are seden- 
tary demons which may sit on a man in bed, or track 
him when he ventures out on foot, but cannot over- 
take a decent horse. 

We traveled slowly on the big patrol over Wood 

Mountain, the Cypress Hills, the Milk River Ridge, 

seven hundred miles between drinks, for there was 

not enough settlement on the way to support one 

[80] 



THE GREAT PATROL 

liquor dealer. We averaged thirty-four miles a day, 
with leisure for a sleep in the noon heat, a swim in the 
creeks, and long delicious evenings by our campfires. 
As for Mr. Blank, special correspondent, expected 
with displeasure by five Troops, the bo} r s at the out- 
posts would often ask me when that brute was coming, 
and who was he, anyway, to be granted a special 
patrol like a blooming Viceroy? I would describe that 
gentleman as far astern, delayed by his enormous 
obesity, a sluggish personage, peevish, stingy, im- 
portant, useless, a burden on the trail, a nuisance to the 
detachments. I was only a buck Policeman, a man 
from the next Troop, on duty as the traveler's serv- 
ant, living my boyhood again, taking the old delight 
in the old Frontier, but now with a clearer vision, an 
older head, a bigger heart, and broader sympathies. 
Keep it a secret from the Government, don't tell the 
officers, that a young female came with us all the way, 
an unofficial person, far from respectable, most repre- 
hensible indeed, an angel with iridescent pinions, 
weaving spells of magic, a spirit who changed this 
mere policeman's beat into a field of flowers fenced by 
the azure sky. She led the boys on duty? at home on 
the lone trail, delighting in their camps, making pets 
[81] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

of their horses, flavoring hard fare, mending broken 
hearts — and her dear name is Romance. The boys, 
bless 'em, were much too stupid to see even when her 
gay wings brushed their eyelids, but I saw. 

No doubt I am quite crazy, who for years had seen 
the Western United States given over to robbery- 
under-arms, cheating and butchery of Indians, duel- 
ing, lynching, train-wrecking, dynamiting of black- 
legs, and other cheerful and hearty forms of outdoor 
exercise — and here was a wilder country where men 
rode unarmed. 

Were our Canadian frontiersmen of a milder type? 
Why, these fellows would ride all day for the Govern- 
ment, then all night for a bottle of whisky, and spent 
the whole of their leisure devising devilments, yet by 
the trickery of an oath and a uniform, Romance had 
created the frailest of them into perfect constables of 
the peace. So by her sly enchantments she inspires 
men just as frail to be magistrates, governors, priests, 
and kings ; and my knees have given way before the 
official scrutiny of a Policeman who last night in his 
private capacity lay drunk. Considering the condi- 
tion of the Western States, what else than witchcraft 
has saved our several British frontiers from total 
[82] 



THE GREAT PATROL 

anarchy? Only the subtle conjuring of Romance 
could have changed the untamable man into a con- 
stable, and put all the wolves on duty to guard the 
sheep. 

" Don't you see her ? " I cried. 

" You're off your chump," said the wolves. 

They rode to every house, asking the sheep if there 
were " any complaints." They had the powers of 
the Russian secret police, the right of search, author- 
ity to kill, and yet were welcome guests. 

The settlers gravely consulted these impudent 
young devils on points of law, the mending of a churn, 
the baby's teething, the symptoms of appendicitis, 
and they never even grinned. At their detachments, 
a string of lonely log-houses, they gave free hospital- 
ity to all comers, relieved suffering travelers, set a 
matronly example in clean housekeeping, and they 
made impartial love to every girl they saw. 

They never would take me quite seriously. One 
night I was rewarded for cooking a dish of curry with 
the gift of a photograph, and stern demands for 
praise. I observed that the hat was all right, the 
coat beautiful, and everything lovely if only the lace 
were omitted. Whereat the donor let fly at me with 
[83] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

the curry, the joint, the loaf, and most of the furni- 
ture, then challenged me to a duel, the weapons to be 
cannon loaded with buffalo-horns, and finally lent me 
his horse for the next day, a compliment he would 
have denied his brother. 

Another man allowed me to ride the Kelly gray, 
who had traveled six thousand miles in the previous 
year, which is a world's record. The next pet horse 
bucked me off before breakfast, and bolted five times 
afterwards, all for pure love of the sunshine. After- 
wards in D Troop I had the famous 414, a superb 
charger who grabbed the seat of my breeches when- 
ever I tried to mount, and for a fortnight greeted me 
of a morning by knocking off my hat. Him I took to 
Calgary, the first town he had seen in all his seventeen 
years. At the sight of a bab3^-carriage he went flat, 
all four legs a-straddle ; and as to the main street he 
could only express his feelings by side jumps across 
the roadway, so large was every house, so apt to 
reach out and bite. The policemen who had four feet 
were naturally twice as merry as those who had only 
two. 

I lack space for detail of our camps and marches 
as we crossed the Plains, and have no skill to describe 
[84] 



THE GREAT PATROL 

the ineffable majesty of that tawny field, with the blue 
sky above wherein the cloud-herds pasture. The most 
abandoned hell-rake becomes awed in time by the dread 
solemnity of that wilderness, so that the sunlight finds 
the springs of a hidden religion, and the waters of life 
sparkle at the discovery. For him who has eyes and 
ears the stones are crying out, the hills are speaking 
of History engraved upon the land, the story of the 
great Ice Age, the tale of the mammoth herds and 
their wild hunters, the romance of Indian times before 
there were any horses, and the scouts built cairns to 
guide their tribes from hill to hill for hundreds of 
miles along the watered routes. We were able to de- 
cipher, as we rode, the story of vast bison herds and 
their migrations, to find the circles of stones which 
weighted long-vanished tents, and read comedies on 
many a rock-face painted with advertisements of old 
Indian raids. Listen to the sorrowful story of the 
Seven Thieves. 

A party of seven Blackfoot warriors had been into 
Montana stealing horses, and on their triumphant 
return stopped to depict their raid at the Writing- 
on-Stone beside Milk River. A lodge to represent 
their numbers, so many horses to show what a lot they 
[85] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

had stolen from the Gros Ventre nation, heads 
turned towards home, tails up to express con- 
tempt, then a few sketch y " suns " told of their 
days on the trail, and all men might read the 
story of what they had done. They advertised too 
much, they stayed too long, for their scalps are in the 
tepees of the Gros Ventres, their bones are neatly ar- 
ranged on top of the rock, their souls — address the 
Happy Hunting Grounds. 

To the blind there is only darkness, but to a man 
with eyes the prairie is alive with all sorts of little 
people in fur hair and feathers, from the absurd 
little owls who openly protest against passing horse- 
men, to the coyote wolf upon his moonlit hill, bewail- 
ing the infrequency of supper. 

The trail itself may be read like an open book, in- 
scribed with a record in the dust of the men who have 
passed since the last rain — Indians, Police, cowboys, 
pioneers. As we rode we were always reading the 
signs, and after we laid down our blankets under the 
stars we would talk sometimes, wondering if we, the 
forerunners, would be remembered when the trails 
had enlarged into roads, and given place to steel rails. 
We knew that the worst lands upon these plains had 
[86] 



THE GREAT PATROL 

been tested, and given forty bushels of wheat to the 
acre. The wheatfields are spreading from the east, 
and when they cover the prairies our Great Lone Land 
will be a thing of history. Our outposts by the Moose 
Pound, and Battle Creek, and Many Berries, Pend 
Oreille, the Writing-on-Stone, Whoopup, Standoff, 
Slideout, the Leavings, will all be cities then, our 
Districts sovereign states, and a nation of forty 
million people will send their senators to represent the 
Plains at Westminster. 

The patrol was nearing the end of the field, and 
already its fence, the Rocky Mountains, had lifted 
above the sky-line like a throng of white angels kneel- 
ing upon the edge of the world. Porthos was driving 
the wagon, while Athos and I scouted to find him a 
route through chaos. " A man," said Athos, " who 
trots on ground like this deserves to be killed. Look 
at the badger holes ! Remember Monty ? Thrown, 
and the horn of the saddle went through his stomach. 
It's sure death to lope. Tchik! " and away we went 
at full gallop. 

We camped that night in Lonely Valley, and woke 
early because of the frost, grubbing like badgers to 
get deeper down into the warmth. Then I felt more 
[87] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

blankets thrown on my shivering body, and two sleeps 
are better than one. I had barely rolled over and 
changed dreams when Porthos yelled: 

" Grub pile ! Show a leg there, you fellows ! here's 
breakfast getting cold, and I've been shivering myself 
into a beastly sweat ! " 

I met d'Artagnan a few days later. Once he and 
I sat on a log beside a cabin, when a man came up to 
talk on a plunging horse. The animal backed at us 
and lashed out at the log wall, at which I moved, but 
d'Artagnan, rather amused, sat with a grave smile 
kicking back at the hotfse until the brute took to 
flight. 

Such are the D Troop riders, but the teamsters are, 
perhaps, the mightest drivers in North America. The 
Earl and Countess of Aberdeen, on their viceregal 
tour, were in the charge of a D Troop teamster, and 
got stuck in a river because the near wheeler, a fool 
mare, lay down to drown -herself. Passing the reins to 
the Viceroy, the teamster swam round that mare, try- 
ing to rouse her, but she was unconscious, and the 
flood had nearly overturned the wagon. Then the 
teamster climbed in his seat for a better purchase, and 
made his three remaining horses drag the drowned 
[88] 



THE GREAT PATROL 

mare, wagon and all, right through the swimming 
and up the bank to safety. 

When the big patrol had come to an end at Fort 
Macleod, I set out again on a five-hundred-mile 
scamper around the flanks of the Rockies, still being a 
guest of the regiment, and busy threading together 
the story of a tragedy which was then in all men's 
minds. Here is the story : 

Dawn was breaking of a summer's day in 1896, 
when Green-Grass-growing-in-the-Water, a Red In- 
dian scout, came trotting into Fort Macleod with a 
dispatch from Standoff for Superintendent Steele. 
He brought news that the body of a Blood war- 
rior, Medicine-Pipe-Stem, shot through the skull, 
and three weeks dead, had been found in an empty 
cabin. 

The Blood tribe knew how Bad-Young-Man, 
familiar to the whites as Charcoal, had three weeks 
since come home from a hunting trip, to his little 
cabin, where his wife, the Marmot, lived. He had 
found his wife in the arms of Medicine-Pipe-Stem, 
and by his warrior's right to defend his own honor 
had shot the intruder down. Charcoal had done 
justice, and the tribe was ready to take his part, what- 
[89] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 
ever the Agent might say, or the Mounted Police 
might do for the white man's law. 

A week had passed of close inquiry, when one of the 
scouts rode up to the ration house where the people 
were drawing their supplies of beef, and gave warning 
that Charcoal was betrayed to the Mounted Police. 

Charcoal demanded the name of his betrayer, and 
learned that Mr. Wilson, the Agent, was his enemy. 
That evening Charcoal waited outside the Agent's 
house, watching the lighted windows, where on the 
yellow blinds there were passing shadows cast by the 
lamp within as various members of the household 
went about their business. At last he saw Mr. Wil- 
son's shadow on the blind, fired, and shot the Agent 
through the thigh. The household covered their 
lamps, closed the shutters, sent for help, and hid the 
wounded man on a couch behind the front door, well 
out of range from the windows. Next morning in 
broad daylight Charcoal went up to the house with a 
rifle to finish Wilson, walked in, and looked about him, 
but failed to discover his victim behind the open door. 
He turned away and rode for the hills, and the 
Mounted Police, turned out for the pursuit, were mis- 
led by a hundred rumors. 

[90] 



THE GREAT PATROL 

D Troop at the time numbered one hundred and 
seventy men, led by Colonel S. B. Steele, the most dis- 
tinguished of all Canadian frontiersmen. After he 
had posted men to guard all passes through the Rocky 
Mountains, he had a district about ninety miles square, 
combed over incessantly by strong patrols, so that 
Charcoal's escape seemed nearly impossible. The 
district, however, was one of foothills, bush, winding 
gorges, tracts of bowlders, and to the eastward prairie, 
where the whole Blood and Piegan tribes were using 
every subtlety of Indian craft to hide the fugitive. 

Inspector Jervis with twenty Police and some scouts 
had been seventy hours in the saddle, and camped at 
Big Bend exhausted, when a rider came flying in re- 
porting Charcoal as seen at Kootenai. The white men 
rallied for the twenty-eight-mile march, but the In- 
dians lay and were kicked, done for, refusing to move. 
The white men scrambled to their saddles, and reeled 
off upon the trail, unconquerable. 

One day a Mormon settler brought news to Mr. 
Jervis, for while cutting fence-rails he had seen Char- 
coal creep out from the bush and make off with his 
coat. So this Mormon led them to a little meadow 
where they found and surrounded a tent. Then Mr. 
[91] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

Jervis took two men and pulled aside the door, 
while they covered the place with their revolvers. Two 
Mormons were brought out, shaking with fright, from 
the tent. 

Further on in the gray dawn they came to another 
clearing, and a second tent, which they surrounded. 
Some noise disturbed the Marmot, who crept sleepy 
to the door, looked out, then with a scream warned 
her husband. Charcoal slashed with his knife through 
the back of the tent, crept into the bush, and thence 
fired, his bullet knocking the cap from the officer's 
head ; but a volley failed to reach him. The tent was 
Charcoal's winter quarters, stored with a carcass of 
beef, five sacks of flour, bacon, sugar, and deerskin 
for his shoes, and there the Marmot was taken, with 
a grown daughter, and a little son called Running- 
Bear, aged eight. 

So far in many weeks of the hunt Charcoal had 
his loyal wife to ride with him, and they used to follow 
the Police patrols in order to be sure of rest when 
the pursuers camped. Two Police horses, left half 
dead, were taken up and ridden by this couple an extra 
forty miles. An officer and a buck were feeding at 
Boundary Creek Detachment when Mr. and Mrs. 
[92]' 



THE GREAT PATROL 

Charcoal stole their chargers out of the stable. But 
now Charcoal had to face the awful prospect of a 
lone fight, and with the loss of his family fell into 
blind despair. Then all his kinsfolk were arrested, to 
the number of thirty-seven, and lodged in prison. 

Since his raid on the horses at Boundary Creek, all 
Police Stables were locked, and visited frequently at 
night. Corporal Armour, at Lee's Creek, came out 
swinging his lantern, sniffing at the night, bound for 
the stable, when he saw a sudden blaze revealing an 
Indian face behind the horse trough, while a bullet 
whisked through his sleeve. He bolted for the house, 
grabbed his gun, and returned only to hear a horse 
galloping away into the night. Charcoal for once 
had failed to get a remount, and was grieved at having 
fired upon a man he greatly liked. Alwaj^s there was 
that feeling, for the warriors of the Blackfoot nation 
have learned to like the Police, to reverence their jus- 
tice, and some of the older non-commissioned officers 
are almost worshiped. 

Wilde, for instance, was universally loved by the 

tribes. The same feeling caused his old regiment, 

the Blues, at Windsor, to beg for Black Prince, his 

charger, after his death, and sent the whole body of 

[93] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

the Northwest Mounted Police into mourning when 
he fell. 

Tradition made him a great aristocrat under an 
assumed name, and I remember well how we recruits 
in the olden times were impressed by his unusual physi- 
cal beauty, his stature, horsemanship, and singular 
personal distinction. Constable Ambrose attended him 
when he rode out for the last time on Black Prince, 
followed by an interpreter and a body of Indian 
scouts. They were in deep snow on a plain where 
there stands a line of bowlders, gigantic rocks, the sub- 
ject of weird legends among the tribes. Far off 
against the sky an Indian was seen riding fast, who 
swerved at the sight of the pursuit, and was recog- 
nised for Charcoal. Wilde ordered Ambrose to gal- 
lop the twenty miles to Pincher Creek, turn the people 
out in the Queen's name, send a dispatch to Macleod, 
and return at once. The Indians tried for Charcoal 
at long range, but their new rifles were clogged with 
factory grease, hard frozen, so that the pin failed 
of its impact, and they all missed fire. Wilde's great 
horse was drawing ahead of the ponied, and he called 
back : 

" Don't fire, or you'll hit me by mistake." 
[94] 



• THE GREAT PATROL 

As he overtook Charcoal he drew his revolver, the 
t>rders being to fire at sight, then laid the weapon 
before him, wanting, for the sake of a great tradi- 
tion, to make the usual arrest, the taking of live out- 
laws by hand. Charcoal's rifle lay across the saddle, 
and he held the reins Indian fashion with the right 
hand, but when Wilde grabbed at his shoulder he 
swerved, touching the trigger with his left. The 
bullet went through Wilde's body, then, deflecting on 
the bone of the right arm, traversed the forearm, came 
-©ut of the palm, and dropped into his gauntlet, where 
it was found. 

Wilde rolled slowly from the saddle, while Black 
Prince went on, and Charcoal also ; but then the out- 
law turned, galloped back, and fired straight down- 
wards into the dying man. Black Prince had stopped 
at a little distance, snorting, and when the Indian came 
grabbing at his loose rein, he struck with his forefeet 
in rage at his master's murderer. Charcoal had fired 
to disable Wilde as the only way left him of escaping 
" slavery " ; now he had to conquer the dead man's 
horse to make his escape from the trackers. 

Some three weeks ago Charcoal's brothers, Left 
Hand and Bear Paw, had been 'released from jail with! 
[95] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

the offer of two hundred dollars from the Government^ 
and fifty dollars from the officer commanding, if they 
could capture the outlaw. The tribes had decided that 
Charcoal's body belonged of right to the Police, and 
after Wilde's death he could expect no mercy on earth, 
no help or succor from any living man. From the 
slaying, like a wounded beast to his lair, he rode 
direct for home, came to the little cabin, tied Black 
Prince to a bush, and staggered towards the door. 
Out from the house came Left Hand, who ran 
towards him, while the outlaw, moved by some brute 
instinct, fled for the horse. But Left Hand, over- 
taking his brother, threw his arms about him, kissing 
him upon both cheeks, and Bear Paw, following, cast 
his rope over the helpless man, throwing him down 
a prisoner. The brothers carried Charcoal into the 
cabin, pitched him down in a corner, then Left Hand 
rode for the Police, while Bear Paw stayed on guard. 
It was Sergeant Macleod who came first to the cabin 
where Bear Paw squatted waiting, and Charcoal lay, 
to all appearance dead, in a pool of blood upon the 
earthen floor. He had found a cobbler's awl, used 
in mending skin shoes, and opened the arteries of his. 
arm, that he might take refuge from treachery in 
[96] 



THE GREAT PATROL 

death. From ankle to groin his legs were skinned 
with incessant riding, and never again was he able 
to stand upon his feet. 

For four months Charcoal had been hunted as an 
enemy by D Troop, now for a like time he was nursed 
in the guard-room at Fort Macleod, and though he 
lay chained to the floor in mortal pain, his brothers of 
the guard did their best. As he had been terrible in 
the field, so this poor hero was brave in suffering, 
humble, and of so sweet a disposition that he won ail 
men's hearts. Once he choked himself with a blanket, 
once poisoned himself with a month's collection of 
cigarette stubs, each time nearly achieving his pur- 
pose, but he never flinched, never gave utterance even 
to a sigh, except for the moaning in his sleep. 

At the trial his counsel called no witnesses, but read 
the man's own defense, a document so sad, so won- 
derfully beautiful in expression, that the court ap- 
pealed to the Crown for mercy, where mercy had 
become impossible. 

When he was taken out to die, the Troop was on 
guard surrounding the barracks, the whole of the 
tribes being assembled outside the fence. The pris- 
oner sat in a wagon, face to face with the executioner, 
[97] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

who wore a mask of black silk, and beside him was 
the priest. Charcoal began to sing his death-song. 

" Stay," said the priest ; " make no cry. You're 
far too brave a man for that." The song ceased, and 
Charcoal died as he had lived. 



[98] 



VII 

THE TRAIL OF THE JOURNALIST 

i Sa reward for getting frozen the Canadian 
/ ^L Government gave me a liberal pension, and a 
/ ^ berth in the Civil Service ; but some months 
of rest at home, followed by a year of work at Ottawa, 
brought on my old complaint — a longing for trouble. 
My wound was now healed ; I had published a scan- 
dalously bad volume of stories and lyrics ; and, as a 
candle draws a moth, the Frontier was calling me 
back. Some fool has noticed that a rolling stone 
gathers no moss. Why should it? I have never ob- 
served any moss on stones of value, or seen a mossy 
stone which was not rotten. 

With not a single regret I turned my back once 
more on civilization, preferring the ways and trails 
of the Lost Legion. At the mature age of twenty- 
two one takes one's self in deadly earnest, and I had 
some vague idea of riding along the Rocky Moun- 
tains from Canada to the City of Mexico. In that 
LofC. [99] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

I succeeded long years afterwards, but for the time, 
having no money, I planned to earn my living on the 
way. So, proceeding by rail to British Columbia, I 
alighted at Kamloops, where I rigged myself out as 
a peddler, and traded with an Indian for a horse. 
In the innocence of my young heart I paid a Win- 
chester rifle, a suit of clothes, and ten dollars, getting 
in exchange a beautiful buckskin gelding, famous — 
I found out all that afterwards — as a man-slayer. 
He tried to kill me twice before I started, but that was 
only by way of experiment, and he reserved the subtle- 
ties of his business until we reached the summit of a 
mountain-pass some sixteen miles from town. I had a 
dim misgiving as to the cincha (girth), and got off to 
see ; when, filling his barrel with wind, he marked my 
cinching with an evil eye. As I mounted he broke 
off at a full gallop down a pile of rocks, drew in his 
ribs, and bucked off the saddle. I remember seeing 
my right arm break at the elbow, and trail off at right 
angles on the rocks, but felt nothing whatever. My 
horse got snarled up in the coils of the picket rope, so 
had to wait in a field vert, seme with babies' bibs, 
cigars, mouth-organs, and patent medicines, until I 
woke up and attended to him. We had an argument 
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then which lasted twenty minutes, while the day faded, 
and a storm breathed violet lightning in the west. 

Using my left hand, I cut the rope, cleared the 
horse, and made fast again to the neck-loop, ready to 
lead ; all of which he observed with an evil smile. Then 
he ran in circles, coiling the slack of the rope thrice 
round my legs, before I saw his game and jumped 
clear. At that he started off in the dead run, draw- 
ing the full length of the rope through my left hand 
because I refused to let go ; he spoiled my left hand. 

Since there was no special reason for remaining in 
a field sprinkled with babies' bibs and mouth-organs, 
I set off down the road in search of a ranch. On 
one side went an arm which weighed like a hundred- 
ton gun, on the other side a hand leaving plentiful 
tracks of blood; and in my head the multiplication 
table mixed up with the Rule of the Road at Sea 
and the Church Catechism. After the end of the 
catechism, I came to an optical illusion which looked 
like a small tent by the wayside. It was a tent, and 
out of it I hoisted a Swedish road repairer. To him 
I talked monotonously, telling him things to keep my 
brain at work, while he — objecting still — led me down 
a corkscrew trail which I mistook for the back of a 
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FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

rattlesnake. A mile or so down, at the tip of its tail, 
there were barking dogs. I remember a front door, 
and a room with a large table which got in the way 
while I walked round it with clattering spurs. Then 
I dropped, and that was the end of the expedition to 
Mexico. 

Some two months afterwards I was lying in hospital 
at Kamloops, of little use to myself or anyone else, 
when news came of war on the Skeena, and up went my 
tail. Somebody wrote me out a telegram, and the 
answer came at once from a Montreal paper : " Yes ; 
to the extent of a hundred dollars." 

Mightily pleased at being a War Correspondent, 
even to the extent of a hundred dollars, I inquired my 
way to the Skeena ; but nobody knew where the place 
was, until an old map was dug up which had it 
marked in dotted lines as a river about a thousand 
miles to the northward. So I took train to the Pacific 
Coast, and at Victoria found a steamer going north- 
ward. She was called the Cariboo Fly, and there 
never was a grimier little vagrant. She dreamed her 
days away in the exquisite channels, camped every 
night in some lovely ba} r , or, when we were bored, gave 
us a birthday party. 

[ 102] 



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On Sunday, while we waited for a tide, sailors and 
passengers, firemen, officers and all, landed for a pic- 
nic in the forest. There mighty pines shot up three 
hundred feet from the mysterious twilight of the 
aisles. The deer came sniffing curiously, canaries 
fluttered round us, and humming-birds flashed by like 
living gems. Sheer from the headlands, down through 
clear emerald sea,* one saw the seaweed forests; and 
the Cariboo Fly, which was never known to hurry, 
seemed afloat in translucent space rather than water. 

Then through the summer days we lay on deck, 
broaching cases of fruit from the cargo, and saved 
ripe peaches from lapsing to moldy pulp. Why, 
little puppies might ripen to old dogs for all the 
Fly cared, so long as she were not bustled ! 

Whales by the score were feasting on cuttlefish in 
the sounds, and the young whales playing about them 
would try to blow tall fountains of spray like their 
sires. A great white-tipped eagle resting on the air, 
gulls and innumerable sea-fowl, porpoises making 
game of our sloth with pretended racing — always 
some blithe wild life attended us. In the narrower 
channels the Fly, with frantic spurt and shrieking 
whistle, would vainly pursue the reindeer as they swam 
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FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

from isle to isle. And at night in the waters beneath, 
revealed in blue-white clouds of phosphorescence, we 
saw the dog-fish, those were-wolves of the sea — at 
their ghastly dances. 

And nothing worried us as the Fly drifted casually 
through that majestic Archipelago, to leave decayed 
fruit at some forlorn trading post, sheet tin at the 
salmon canneries on lonely fjords, «or trifling parcels 
with a waiting skiff. 

We threaded abysmal chasms, where cataracts 
leaped white from the mountain-tops, to be lost in a 
belt of clouds, and roll gray to the tide beneath. And 
so through sheets of rain into the grim jaws of the 
Skeena Inlet, and landed among the stinks of Spuk- 
shuat. 

In a region so steeply walled that there are very 
few landing-places except for goats, and where mis- 
sions and salmon canneries get wiped out by occasional 
avalanches, Spukshuat had just enough space to be 
a quagmire. That is why the people, stray whites, 
half-breeds, and many Indians, were full of sinful 
pride, and, though there was only a trading post and 
a cannery, the place had two names, assuming the 
style of Port Essington. A battery of Canadian 
[ 104] 



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Artillery was in camp close by, unable to reach the 
seat of war up the Skeena ; firstly because there was 
no war, and secondly because the only possible trans- 
port was by dugout canoes unable to carry guns. 

A hundred and fifty miles up the Skeena River 
dwelt an Indian nation called the Gaetkshian, who 
had never heard of the Canadian Government. They 
observed that the whites — there were twenty-five in a 
region as big as Germany — were only a small tribe, 
with a taste for preaching and shop-keeping. They 
believed in the Hudson's Bay Company. 

Now the Company had a house called Hazelton at 
the Forks of the Skeena, and the gentleman in charge 
took to evil courses. He sold measles to the Gaetk- 
shians, mixed up with his brown sugar, of which two 
hundred and forty people died. No white people 
died. I have this on the authority of the native doc- 
tors, who knew about it, and advised their laity, just 
by way of reasonable precaution, to massacre all the 
whites. 

Of course the whites are accustomed to that sort 

of thing, and in savage countries would get quite 

uneasy if they heard no rumors of their impending 

massacre. They would think there must be some 

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FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

plot. But then came the lamentable tragedy of 
Gaeiwinlthgul Jim. He was an extremely nice man, 
with a shrew to wife. They had two little children 
who tramped with them long days through the sop- 
ping snow, attended a fever-stricken debauch in their 
wet clothes, and died of measles. Jim had no grudge 
against the whites, but Mrs. Jim happened to be the 
heiress of Nealth, the family doctor. Jim went and 
shot the doctor. 

After this proper and reasonable act, Jim paid off 
t; e doctor's relations — came down very handsomely 
with a copper shield charged with £he tribal arms, a 
bale of blankets, and some guns, all of which he 
pitched down a hill to quench the grief of the 
mourners. The mourners were comforted. 

But then he was annoyed by the needless inter- 
ference of five white constables sent nearly eight hun- 
dred miles to arrest him. He and Mrs. Jim fortified 
themselves in a house at the hill village of Gaetwinlth- 
gul, declared war against the whites, and threatened 
death to all who molested their peace. They had ful- 
filled the law, the real tribal law. 

All might still have gone well but for two things: 
the shrew would worry Jim, and the Indian agent on 
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the coast sent him a letter advising surrender. He 
could not read the letter, nobody could, but it seemed 
to be some sort of passport. So to get away from 
being nagged, Jim went off peaceably and made love 
to a lively widow down at Gaetwangak on the river. 
There he was captured by a constable, and naturally 
thought there must be some mistake. He bolted, and 
the white man shot him. 

Of course the whole nation was furious at this out- 
rage ; moreover, the Gaetkshians and the neighboring 
Nishgars numbered a thousand rifles, all good shots. 
They demonstrated, and twenty-seven special con- 
stables in a mortal funk came up the river to build 
a fort of refuge at Hazleton. Then the Indians were 
horrified. What did it mean ? Were the whites going 
to break out? Happily Captain Fitz-Stubbs, whom 
they all knew and liked, came up the river just then, 
alone, unarmed, and told the Indians not to make fools 
of themselves. A battery of artillery was down at 
the river mouth, and a warship lay in the tide which 
could eat them all at one gulp. They promised to 
be good until these clouds rolled by, but next winter 
they would play the very deuce. Jim had been mur- 
dered by the whites, and his tribe was bound to avenge 
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FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

him at the scene of the crime at Gaetwangak on the 
river. They were going to kill a missionary, and 
would await the return of the incumbent of Gaet- 
wangak. 

Now the missionary incumbent of Gaetwangak was 
newly married, and did not want his wife to be a 
widow, so he very wisely accepted another parish. 
The Synod of the Missions scratched their ears, 
and prayed for a nice young locum tenens to win- 
ter at Gaetwangak. The laity of the coast were 
all very secular both in manners and conversation, 
neither would it do to import any unwary young ten- 
derfoot from Home. Something was wanted for an 
incumbent not liable to overexcite the parish by get- 
ting martyred. I wanted, for my editor, to get an 
accurate report of the Skeena troubles. The Synod 
appointed me to Gaetwangak. 

Meanwhile I was not expected there until November, 
so Jim's friends and relations had to exercise the 
Christian grace of patience. I was down at the mouth 
of the river, cloyed with the fragrance of Spukshuat, 
but having a lovely time with C Battery. We bor- 
rowed a steam-launch, explored an uncharted fjord, 
and discovered an enormous cataract which came down 
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from a navigable river. Where that river came from 
nobody knew, but it was as big as the Thames at 
Oxford. 

Like a sitting hen with no eggs is a war corre- 
spondent restive without any war to distort. And 
my editor had suggested that, being in the neighbor- 
hood, I might just as well report on the Behring 
Sea Question. I was no more bothered than he by 
trifling points of geography. Behring Sea was only 
two thousand miles distant, and I still had fifty bright 
dollars, enough for a gorgeous autumn on lines 
of the strictest economy. I set out by canoe for 
Alaska. 

The dugout canoe of the northern tribes is no 
clumsy log scooped hollow. It is indeed hewn from 
the trunk of a giant cedar, but the shell is less than 
an inch in thickness. When the hull is finished it is 
filled with water, and the water boiled by throwing 
in red-hot stones. The beams being set in position, 
the gunwale shrinks against them in cooling, and 
the lofty carved prow and stern-piece complete lines 
of most delicate beauty. The usual size is that of a 
Venetian gondola, with a beam of five and a half feet, 
a length of thirty feet, a ballast of three tons, and a 
. [109] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

crew of five men. The steering is done with a large 
oar, and two pole-masts are carried with trysails, 
schooner- fashion. 

A family of the Hydah tribe took me to sea as a 
passenger, and their vessel, winged out, running on 
the swell of the open Pacific, was the loveliest sea- 
creature I have ever known. Making the Alaskan 
coast, we threaded a maze of channels, camping in 
little bays, where we feasted on fresh venison, — like 
rubber tires boiled, — on freshly speared salmon, sea- 
weed salads, clams, mussels, and ripe wild fruit, all 
cleanly cooked and served by the women round a blaz- 
ing fire, After these evening banquets we would go 
on by starlight, gliding in phosphorescent seas of 
pale-blue flame, until Ave reached our camp-ground 
for the night. 

These Hydahs of the Queen Charlotte Islands were 
nearly white, and one of the men in other clothes 
might readily have passed for an English sailor. In 
old times the tribe were Vikings, masters of the 
coast, a slave-holding aristocracy, skilled not only 
in canoe- and house-building, but in sculpture, 
heraldry, and other arts which they may have learned 
from Japanese castaways. Their carvings have been 
[110] 



THE TRAIL OF THE JOURNALIST 

mistaken for native work in Japan. Let me tell just 
one of their legends. 

A man went away to the hunting up Masset Inlet, 
and left his young wife in the house alone. While 
he was away she bore a child to him. And when he 
came back by night, he stole into the dark house, 
creeping softly to where she lay, lest he disturb her 
in her sleep. He bent over her, looking down ten- 
derly in her face, then in horror drew back. Another 
head was nestled at her breast, he heard soft breathing 
in response to hers, and felt the warmth from someone 
else in the bed. Mad with anguish, he lifted up her 
hand, the hand which he had taken to caress, and 
bit it to the bone. She woke with a great cry, raised 
herself on her knees, then to her feet, and held the 
child before her, held it up to him. Why had he come, 
she asked, like a dog to bite her while she lay nestling 
the child in its first sleep? He muttered out his 
doubts, his jealousy, his penitence, his love, and then 
she understood. 

She towered above him now, asked how he dared 

insult her with his doubts, cursed him, cursed him in 

the name of the Raven, and by the Terrors of the 

Sea, made him a laughing-stock from generation to 

[111] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

generation forever; called on Him, the Raven, the 
Omnipotent Creator, bade Him strike down, strike 
this man, strike him and kill. 

Then the Raven struck the man and made him to 
be a laughing-stock forever, and turned him into a 
stone by the rising tide upon the shore. But the 
woman with her child ran down into the sea. 

The people go along the shore deriding this man 
who is turned to a stone, the craven who doubted, and 
is a laughing-stock forever. 

The waters of the rising tide lap the cold stone, 
with broken-hearted murmuring, sorrow over him, 
ever troubled, never resting, ever forgiving, chiding 
in the measure of her sorrow, from generation unto 
generation. 

My voyage with the Hydahs ended at last at the 
village founded by Mr. Duncan, a well-known mis- 
sionary, who arranged that I should be neither fed nor 
sheltered lest I corrupt the morals of his converts. 
I insulted him most heartily in return, and took my 
leave in a flat-bottomed boat with two Indians, just as 
a big storm broke. Now these canoe Indians hate a 
boat, and when we got into bad water — my fault, of 
course — they became discouraged — white man's busi- 
[112] 



THE TRAIL OF THE JOURNALIST 

ness, not theirs. So I woke from my beauty sleep to 
find both men lying helpless upon their oars, while 
half-swamped we drifted through total darkness to 
destruction. " Would they be graciously pleased to 
pull?" "No," they said; "since we've got to die 
anyway, why bother? " With my boot I rebuked them 
both, and when I had kicked them into a different 
mind they began to cheer up. Still we were all nearly 
drowned, and wholly exhausted, before, at the break 
of day, we found more sheltered water in Tongass 
Narrows. 

There is a cannery at the Narrows, where I waited 
a week for a steamer, and in the estuary of a creek 
near by saw a run of the hump-backed salmon. To 
reach fresh water they had to climb a cascade, at the 
top of which it was easy to take the fish by hand, 
grabbing behind the gills. Crowded into the ap- 
proach to the cascade there were many thousands 
waiting their turn for the jump, and because of the 
dogfish attending in their rear they were closely 
packed. I tried to row a dory through that place, but 
could get neither my oars into the water nor the boat 
over the backs of the fish, while, attempting to break 
away on either side, the creatures splashed me wet with 
[113] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

the lash of their dorsal fins. My host would gaff a 
dozen every morning to select one fish for his dinner. 
A seine towed into the beach and" made fast to a couple 
of trees dried out with the ebb, and was estimated to 
contain two thousand five hundred hump-backed 
salmon, with large numbers of the better varieties. 
The bulk of them were left to rot, and the stench of 
the whole place was beyond endurance. 

From thence I was liberated by an American tourist 
steamer, five of whose glittering officers answered to 
the title of Captain, while the personage in supreme 
command held the rank of Commodore. My fellow- 
passengers in the steerage consisted of gold-miners, 
Chinamen, Indians, Kanakas, a grizzly bear, and a 
steam-winch based within six inches of my nose as I 
lay in a bunk like a hat-rack. That winch worked 
usually all night, and our first seance was further en- 
livened by the lamentations of the bear, and the wail- 
ing of an Indian dame who had lost her purse. " He 
stole my money! He go to jail at Junean, you bet 
your gum boots ! He stole my money ! " Her chant 
only ended with the dawn, when she found the money 
in her pocket. 

The tourists, dull clegs all, were writing books of 
[114] 



THE TRAIL OF THE JOURNALIST 

travel, and the air flickered with their snapshot 
photography, but not a soul of them stayed on deck 
while we battered our way through pack ice into the 
heart of the alps of St. Elias, and watched the em- 
battled precipice of the Muir Glacier launch crashing 
bergs in thunder through white surf. They spat and 
talked dollars after their kind, while down in the 
under-world of the steerage the Chinese coolies jab- 
bered, the drunken Indian women shrieked like witches, 
and the poor old bear moaned over bones in a corner. 

After ten days of wonders and marvels I was glad 
to escape the clatter, dirt, and flashy vulgarity of that 
perfumed menagerie. I landed at Fort Tongass, 
and paid my last five dollars to an elderly Indian lady 
for a passage by canoe to Fort Simpson in British 
Columbia. I had the honor of pulling the canoe my- 
self, while the lady squatted in the stern-sheets making 
violent love to a young man whom she had bough c 
for her husband. 

From Fort Simpson the Hudson's Bay Company 
gave me by courtesy a passage in one of their canoes 
to Metlacahtla. On my arrival the Indian crew at- 
tempted to levy blackmail, so having led them to the 
magistrate's house, I doubled back and got my bag- 
[115] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

gage secured. Then with the magistrate's aid I made 
the Indians a " strong paper," which they readily ac- 
cepted instead of cash. It read as follows : " Dear 

L , these fellows tried blackmailing, kindly give 

them Hell with my compliments, yours sincerely." 

Stony broke, greatly refreshed, and in a peaceful 
mood, I had now to report mycelf to the Diocesan 
Synod of New Caledonia, as ready to proceed to the 
Skeena and be a missionary among the unoffending 
heathen. To my horror I was ordered to show my 
paces by preaching in the cathedral (unconsecrated). 
To preach a sermon ! 

I have been in many a deadly peril, but my blood 
never ran so icy cold with fright as when I mounted 
the steps of the pulpit. I remembered that I had 
been a trooper, had acquired more than ordinary 
cheek, and gave twenty minutes of offense to a congre- 
gation of serious Christian Indians. I told them that 
the wages of sin is death, that the sin may consist of 
dirt surrounding a salmon cannery, and that the death 
takes the shape of pestilence. They concluded I was 
no Christian. 

Five men of my congregation had an ample venge- 
ance when, a few days later, I set off with them 
[116] 



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for the mouth of the Skeena River. If their views 
conflicted with mine, the canoe, said they, was " Hud- 
son's Bay Company," I was only a passenger, and 
not even a Christian, anyway, so I'd better shut up. 
I did. We reached the Skeena Inlet, and for the next 
ten days ensuing climbed up a long slope of river 
with " riffles " at every bend. Sailing, poling, pad- 
dling, rowing, tracking, we fought that torrent daily 
from dawn to night. At every vicious rapid the 
helmsman would mention, in broken English, canoes 
upset there and strong swimmers drowned. 

Wet, shivering, lonesome, forced to sit in dignity 
lest I show my incompetence as a canoe-man, nearly 
addled with fright, I had but one idea left — to hide 
my alarm. So in the desperate passage of a white 
sluice I would revile the Indians for splashing me. 
My rude words they understood, and merely deplored 
them ; but if ever a white man showed funk in danger, 
why, what was the use of all his doctrines ! They 
never found me out, but thought I was a rummy vari- 
ant from the usual type of parson. I doubt if it 
ever quite stopped raining, but we did not always 
roost in the drenched open on a bank of bowlders. 
Usually the fire was built among big pines, with a 
[117] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

sail for our shelter set up on poles in front, and the 
cooking was always perfect. After supper, wet to 
the skin, and tired out, these young athletes sang 
hymns with accuracy and power, the words all gone 
funny, but the melody ringing gloriously clear. 
Their one vice was a mania for prayer-meetings ; and 
sometimes, dawdling by the way in the smoke shed of 
a native family under the maggot-dripping, putrid- 
drying salmon cured for the winter's food, I would 
lapse to open revolt against the unbounded loquacity 
of their supplications. Then they knew I was no 
good. They gave me an awful character to their 
chums of the up-river tribes. 

At last, passing by my station at Gaetwangak, we 
came to Hazelton in the Forks of Skeena, where I 
completed my outfitting at the Hudson's Bay House. 
Seven gold-miners from the far-away Omenica were 
wintering here in civilization, still removed by seven 
hundred and fifty miles of impenetrable, almost un- 
known, wilderness from the nearest white man's town. 
The last belated canoes were leaving for the sea, and 
thereafter for six months we would only hear once 
from the outer world — when the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany's carrier came in on snowshoes, loaded with the 
[118] 



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midwinter mail. One day when we were sitting in 
the store, all thinking hard while the Hudson's Bay 
man worked at his accounts, I hazarded a question: 

" How much does it cost to winder? " 

" Two hundred dollars," said one miner. 

" Two-fifty," corrected another. 

Then the Company's man looked up from his 
ledger. " All you've got," he chuckled ; and the 
proposition was carried unanimously. 

That evening, after dinner at the Mission House, 
one of these gentlemen came to the door and, stand- 
ing outside, nervously reminded my hostess of her 
remark last year that nuggets should make lovely 
jewelry. " I thought you might fancy these," he 
ventured, presenting her with three ingots of gold, 
" for a brooch and earrings." So women are wor- 
shiped on the Frontier. 

I was near the thin end of my credit when, with 
six months' provisions in a canoe, I went down to live 
at my station, thirty winding miles below the Forks, 
It was clear after the first snow, and now that the 
clouds were gone I saw the river was but a little chan- 
nel lost among the foundations of tremendous ice- 
clad mountains. Twelve miles below Gaetwangak 
[119] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

lived an independent missionary with his household; 
elsewhere, except at the Forks, there were no white 
people, and the surrounding regions were marked on 
the maps " unexplored." 

Someone had been a coward before me at Gaet- 
wangak, either afraid of pagan influence on his con- 
verts, or scared for his very life, because the Mission 
was built two miles upstream from the village. It 
was a comfort to know I was not the only person 
scared, but surely I had little to rely on in the credu- 
lous young quarter-breed who served as my acting 
interpreter for the first few weeks. He made rare fun 
for the heathen, swallowing all that was told him of 
our impending death, and with red-hot imagination 
enlarged their tales to me. So it was in miserable 
apprehension that I daily raided the village to tend 
the sick, and round up my children for school. I 
buried my revolver, and went unarmed; for indeed it 
is beneath the white man's dignity to carry a weapon 
as though he were frightened of attack. Besides, I 
am a hopelessly bad shot. 

Now Captain Fitz-Stubbs, as magistrate, had been 
ordered to visit the tribes, making proclamation of 
the British Peace vice the Indian Law demised. Last 
[ 120] 



THE TRAIL OF THE JOURNALIST 

of all he came to my village, camped at the school- 
house, arranged for a council, and sent an old woman 
with a note inviting me to attend. He had just en- 
gaged a new interpreter, a vociferous expert at pray- 
ing. This ingenious person came to tell us that the 
tribe was waiting in the Chief's house. He had just 
learned that Fitz-Stubbs and I were to be killed, so 
he reported everything all right. 

We found the tribe assembled in one of the great 
cedar houses, a broad low-pitched barn proportioned 
like a Greek temple, and fronted by a mast sculptured 
from base to summit with the heraldic records of the 
family. In the middle of the house, under the smoke 
vent, burned a ceremonial fire of piled-up logs, but 
the light of the flames fell far short of the shadowy 
walls, and was only fitfully gleaming on the mighty 
blackened rafters overhead. As our eyes widened to 
the gloom, we could see the ruddy bronzed faces of 
the people as they sat motionless, impassive, about 
two hundred and fifty in number, round a big circle. 
Behind a fire a chair and table were set in the Chief's 
place, and there the magistrate sat down, his in- 
terpreter standing beside him. A soap box was 
placed for me in front of the people on his right. 
[121] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

Captain Fitz-Stubbs spoke cheerfully about the 
recent troubles, the frequent killing of men in the 
valley, the stupidness of blood feuds, and the strength 
of the white man's government, which now com- 
manded their obedience on pain of inevitable punish- 
ment. 

The Chief, Gillawa, responded, a young, powerful, 
manly chap, frankly contemptuous. The Indian 
law was good, he said, had lasted as long as the moun- 
tains. The white man's law was new, and weaker than 
a baby. Let the white man go to the salt water, and 
take his law with him. 

The people were silent, the flame-light flickered 
redly on their eyes. Their turn was come, two white 
men were to die on the very scene where Gaetwinlthgul 
Jim had been murdered. Still there was much talk- 
ing by subchiefs and councilors. At last a young 
man rose, who spoke at length, crouched down, creep- 
ing ever nearer to the magistrate, brandishing a long 
knife with many a forward thrust of the fire-lit blade, 
shouting, gesticulating, working up his fury for the 
death stroke. 

I was crouched like a cat, strung for the rush to 
join Fitz-Stubbs, but still pretending to be at ease. 
[122] 



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He knew that on his coolness depended the lives of all 
our people in the valley — the women, the children. 

" Why don't you strike ? " he said to the man with 
the knife. " I'm an old man, my beard is white, I 
haven't long to live ; I am unarmed, at your mercy — 
you bloody coward, you're afraid to strike ! " 

The Indian lowered the knife, collapsed into vague 
threatenings, and was silent. 

When at last we white men strolled out of the 
house into the fresh keen dusk : " That's all right," 
said Fitz-Stubbs. 

He ordered his men to the canoe. " Well," he said, 
as we shook hands, " good-by. See you next month 
at the Forks? All right, we'll have a smoke then. So 
long!" 

And he left me, this man with the white man's 
courage which I had still to learn. 

Massacres at Nootka, Murderer's Bar, and Smith 
Inlet, the then recent slaughter and burning of the 
Sea-bird* s crew, and many another tragedy of that 
region, had taught the whites to be canny with these 
people. The Skeena is not without its memories. In 
1866, before the success of the Atlantic cable, an over- 
land telegraph was planned from New York to St. 
[ 123] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

Petersburg by way of Behring Strait. From the 
Fraser to the Skeena the line was finished, and in 1898 
I found the old trail still cumbered with fallen wire. 
The line itself was too nrysterious a thing for any 
savage to fool with, but a fort was built to guard 
the stores at the Skeena terminal, and a man was left 
on guard through the winter months. Over a thou- 
sand miles of that iron thread, the lonely operator 
would talk with his chum on the Fraser; and when 
the Kispyox tribe attacked his block-house, the mes- 
sages became of acutest interest. For six months the 
fort was held, but at last, by aid of an Indian girl, the 
garrison escaped by night in a canoe. Looking back, 
he saw the block-house burst into flames. 

Once, Mr. Hankin, the trader, was coming up the 
river in a canoe, and his Indians landing at Kitze- 
gucla set fire to the village by accident. On the 
trader's return the Kitzeguclas hauled him out of his 
canoe, and bade him prepare for death. 

" With pleasure," said he, " but will you first oblige 
by standing aside. I really must write a line to Mrs. 
Hankin or she will be getting quite anxious." 

While he wrote, and he did not hurry, the tribe 
cooled off. To the savage mind there is something 
[124] 



THE TRAIL OF THE JOURNALIST 

mysterious and awful in English coolness. Indeed, 
a king's majesty hedges the white man among sav- 
ages ; but as the winter advanced, I often wondered 
if my aura was quite bullet-proof. An old magician, 
who had no love for me as a rival doctor, used to 
stand on his house-roof daily predicting my death, 
and scaring the children as they came to school. At- 
tendance slackened, the elders fell away from the con- 
gregation. I would preach about " dogs barking in 
the village," and send about the pictures of Her 
Majesty's war-canoes which had shelled two villages 
on the coast, and might look in on Gaetwangak if re- 
quired. 

At last in December the Gaetwinlthgul tribe came 
down from the hills to kill me. My people came out 
of the village to meet their visitors, hour after hour 
the two tribes were face to face in line of battle among 
the graves of the ancestors, talking me over. Why 
they discussed so simple a matter I never knew. My 
Indian interpreter had arrived from the coast by then, 
so, dressed in a parson's clothes, a bowler hat, and a 
Winchester rifle, he took command of the schoolhouse 
garrison of Christians. This consisted of Lost Creeic 
Jim, Willie the Bear, and a half-witted youth 
[ 125 'J 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

wreathed in permanent smiles, and they held the 
schoolhouse all day long while the two tribes talked 
and talked. The Gaetwinlthguls wanted an old gen- 
tleman called Niesh-cum-a-la, who had betrayed the 
lamented Jim to the constables. He was away fishing, 
and did not oblige. Then they demanded me. I was 
away on snowshoes with an Indian packer, buying 
their Christmas presents at the Forks, and never knew 
I was wanted for six weeks afterwards. They trailed 
away home, disheartened. 

Thus ended a campaign of gunboats and artillery, 
bastions for defense, special correspondents, popular 
excitement, and every element of a successful war — 
except fighting. 



[126] 



VIII 
THE TRAIL OF THE MISSION ARY 

DAY after day I watched the black tumultu- 
ous river making its hopeless fight against 
the cold. The drops froze on the surface 
into globules like little peas, which tumbled down the 
current until they hit the bottom and stuck. Reefs of 
these ice-globules grew up, barring the stream, and 
making still ponds which glazed over every night. 
By day the thin covering broke, to pile on the reefs, 
while steadily the marginal ice crept out towards mid- 
stream. At last in late December a strong frost 
caught the drift and the floating globules together, 
.and the Skeena became a field of black ice. On this 
field a crop sprang up of fern-shaped crystals, shin- 
ing like diamonds in the sunlight. Then deep snow 
drifted over all. 

I cannot guess how cold were the four months which 
followed, because the mercury thermometer gener- 
ally stayed frozen. So near were the mountains that 
the sun never rose above them, but at noon would 
[127] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

shine through a cleft, giving me the time. Daily I 
tramped on snowshoes down to the village, rang the 
schoolhouse bell 5 gathered the grown scholars and the 
children beside the red-hot stove, gave lessons in read- 
ing and writing and English, or made maps on the 
blackboard to show them how the valley was planned , 
the district, the province, the continent, and the world. 
Afterwards there were visits to all the sick, and even- 
ing classes around my stove at the Mission. By pub- 
lic subscription we made the schoolhouse into a church, 
and on Sundays — sometimes on Saturday or Monday 
by mistake — we had matins, the reading, and the even- 
song. On Christmas Eve the congregation came to 
the Mission garden, and sang carols with exquisite 
clearness. Above them the moon hung low upon the 
peaks, lanterns gleamed like gems along the pines, 
and the snow was like a field of little stars. The faith- 
ful were fed that night, and on the morrow there was 
a surprising feast for all-comers, of burned hash and 
half-raw plum-pudding, with high revels afterwards 
and a Christmas tree. 

There was much to do. The heathen lived health- 
ily in their well-ventilated barns of hewn cedar; but 
the righteous must needs have stuffy little houses, 
[19.8] 



THE TRAIL OF THE MISSIONARY 

microbe traps to cultivate the phthisis which sent them 
up to heaven in a hurry. They sacrificed much to 
dress like missionaries, gave themselves airs and 
graces among the heathen, and were needlessly up- 
lifted because successive white men had been sent from 
the outer spaces to learn, their precious language. I 
flatly declined to learn that wonderful dialect, be- 
cause they had need of English and I no occasion for 
Gaetkshian; wore gum boots or deerskin hunting- 
dress in church to show that religion did not consist 
of ugly garments; and discouraged the endless lo- 
quacity of their prayers as tending only to self- 
righteousness. It did them good to be shocked, be- 
cause a Mission has no need to be a ranch for rais- 
ing prigs, and a Christian Indian ought not to be 
distinguished from his fellows for unctuous rascality, 
vanity, and gloom. 

A man came whining for counsel, saying that his 
neighbor had worried him. Of course the obvious an- 
swer was, " Go punch his head," but the doctrine 
seemed to be quite a new one, heterodox, and a scandal 
to the whole valley. Sometimes after that I shrank 
from giving advice, and indeed one must 'ware traps 
in the Mission field. My own friend, Lost Creek Jim, 
[129] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

was in trouble when his tribe demanded of him the 
custom that he hold a feast to his father's memory, 
and there give away all he had among the parasites 
of his native village. Was he exempt as a Christian, 
or must he perform this pagan rite and be ruined ? 

" Jim," said I, " as a Christian man you're free, 
but can you sneak out of being a gentleman? " It 
was as a pagan he became his father's heir. " Go and 
be a heathen for two weeks, then come home, and you'll 
find yourself a better Christian for the sacrifice." 

So that savage gentleman went away for two weeks, 
and came back beggared, his eyes shining. He never 
talked much, but his wife made a fine sash and gave 
it to me. She noticed that Jim and I had become like 
brothers. 

It was not easy at twenty-three to know all about 
everything; to be parson, school-teacher, and master 
of the tribe. But the medical and surgical work was 
specially awkward, and the big medicine book became 
the bane of my life. The author must have been very 
learned, so subtle and obscure were his thoughts, and 
all his words beyond human understanding. He must 
have lived in a chemist's shop, with all the drugs in 
the world on surrounding shelves. 

[ 130 ] 



THE TRAIL OF THE MISSIONARY 
I wondered how he would heal a compound frac- 
ture, with his interpreter in hysterics, with moss, bed 
linen, and firewood for appliances. Still the huge 
book was a most impressive exhibit, and the child 
got perfectly well in spite of me. 

I was called to attend an old woman new stricken 
with paralysis it seemed, half her body dead and the 
other half not likely to be of much use. The mighty 
book urged drugs which seemed on the whole intended 
to stimulate. So I warmed up the lady's inside with 
a few ounces of black and red pepper, chili, mustard, 
curry-powder, and painkiller (a patent medicine), in 
a tumbler of boiling brandy. She took it, smiling, and 
perhaps from faith, or accidental mercury in the 
" painkiller," the clot of blood in her brain was 
urged to move on. Next day she was gathering 
firewood. 

Much has been written about the natural savage 
taste for firewater, but these Northwestern Indians 
are possessed of a diseased craving for castor and cod- 
liver oil, and will perjure their souls for a drink. One 
buck Indian came to me in a terrible state of mind, 
beyond reach of earthly aid save by castor-oil. He 
had a mote dancing before his eyes these three weeks 
[131] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

past, and I must rescue him even at the cost of a dose. 
I made a mortal enemy by refusing. 

And indeed I needed all I had for a young girl, 
who, to judge by the book, had every single malady 
named in its index except, perhaps, housemaid's knee. 
One Sunday I had just been to see her, and was at 
the schoolhouse preparing my interpreter for the 
evening sermon, when the death-wail arose in the 
village. Running to the place, I held up my hand 
in the doorway, crying, " Peace be to this house ! " 
in a tone which silenced the row. The child still lived, 
but I had no brandy with me, and failing that said 
the Prayers of the Visitation while I felt her dying 
in my arms. Hitherto the neat formulae of the 
Prayer Book had seemed of little use, drifting away 
on the wind, but now somehow the words went straight 
upwards like smoke in still air. I felt her die in my 
arms. The people were kneeling about us, and I 
hushed the wailing of the women, making my inter- 
preter pray. " Oh, Shimoigaet ! Shimoigaet La- 
hagh ! " I was folding the dead hands over a still 
heart. Then a voice loud and tremulous broke in on 
the prayer. " Shut up ! " I said aloud, because of 
all that was passing upwards in the still air ; but then, 
[ 132] 



THE TRAIL OF THE MISSIONARY 

turning round, held my peace, astonished. Gillawa, 
the Chief, knelt praying at her feet. I knew him to 
be a good hunter, an honorable and fearless leader of 
his people; had seen him, but a few weeks ago, defy 
the whole Empire in frank rebellion. To capture this 
pagan chief was to win the tribe, and he was brought 
to his knees by the death of this child he had loved. 

That evening as I walked beside the river, a mist 
lifted softly from the ice, the gaunt peaks glowed 
flame and violet in the afterglow, the lights of heaven 
shone out one by one, and every moment revealed 
still vaster distances of starry sky — it was the open- 
ing of the gates of Space. Only a scrub white man, 
and something of a fool, I was given a whole tribe 
in my grasp. These grave hunters were children to 
lead, if I could find the way. 

When I buried the child it was with full Christian 
rites, for if she went without baptism that was my 
fault, not hers, and I had made so many mistakes that 
a little guilt more or less would not count. 

Gillawa was leader of his people, afraid to leave 
his trust by turning Christian. I wanted him, as the 
best man in the tribe, to be chief, but with his con- 
version the chiefship would lapse to Tsimadeaks, the 
[133] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

father of the dead child. I could not spare him either, 
and he told me in secret that he was a Christian. I 
wanted him to be so openly. Could I get Tsimadeaks 
to make a solemn renunciation of his rights to the 
lapsing chief ship? Then Gillawa might come to me 
as leader, and both Tsimadeaks and all the rest would 
follow. I must go very delicately lest I set these two 
men by the ears. I asked them both to dinner. It 
was wonderful to see how these pure-blooded and un- 
tainted savages, who never in their lives had sat at a 
table, behaved like guests in some London club, being 
by instinct gentlemen. After dinner I made Tsima- 
deaks picture his heraldic sign on a paper, renounc- 
ing the chiefship ; then persuaded Gillawa, as leader 
of his people, to lead them the only right way. For 
the rest of the winter both men came with their wives 
and children to school. The classes and congrega- 
tions grew week by week, the work was doubled, and 
the fight was won. 

The people let me know them better now, and they 
were curiously like white folk under the skin. Some- 
times tired of school, we would set the little ones play- 
ing their winter games, blindman's buff, tag, or puss- 
in-the-corner, just the same as ours, but never were 
[134] 



THE TRAIL OF THE MISSIONARY 

civilized children half so funny. There was a game 
in which one side made imitations of the tribal beasts, 
the bear, the wolverine, the whale, the beaver, and 
the raven, while the other side paid forfeit if they 
laughed. I think our youngsters would like that if 
they tried it, and the elders joined in, as we did to 
the very point of bursting. And sometimes the old 
people would tell the tribal myths about the Deluge, 
the Age of Fire, the times of the man-beasts their an- 
cestors, of inter-tribal wars, and the white man's com- 
ing. It was a hundred years since first the white 
man came, but the oral traditions are borne out to the 
very details by the explorers' printed records. 

These nations of the far Northwest are not Red 
Indians, but Asiatics, with square heads and oblique 
eyes. Canoe life has made them giants down to the 
waist, tapering among the seaboard tribes to quite 
inadequate legs. They are practical, industrious, 
rather dirty, and very cheerful, with none of the deli- 
cacy, the dreamy mysticism of the red men. Still 
they have their pride and their mysteries, for one little 
boy waxed hostile and magnificent when I told him 
to wash his face. Moreover, when in a sermon I 
threatened to come down on Monday and clean the 
[135] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

village, Christian and pagan alike they were out for 
war. I wanted a fight just then to relieve the mo- 
notony, so, bright and early on Monday, I marshaled 
the faithful to the number of four, then marched on 
the village armed with picks and shovels. Half-way 
they lost heart, broke for the woods, but I could not 
well draw back from my given word. Full of mis- 
givings, my back to the loopholed walls of ominously 
silent houses, I set to work, digging a military latrine 
among the graves of the ancestors. Now this was a 
sore point with the Gaetwangaks, that the ground 
was rich in gold, an alluvial mine of the Bonanza type ; 
indeed one could dig up four dollars a day almost 
anywhere upon the village land. 

They had driven miners away by force of arms, 
and rooting at their blessed ancestors felt rather like 
digging my own grave. Still tl^ never fired a shot. 
Indeed, a little cold cheek is a better defense than 
plate-armor; for by noon the faithful joined me 
openly, watching my progress and giving advice; 
and the old women were busy as bees spring-cleaning 
the village paths. By night the place was as slick as 
a barrack, and the new sanitation was accepted as a 
fact. 

[136] 



THE TRAIL OF THE MISSIONARY 

So the lonely days went by, and I found that 
pedestal of all the virtues dull. 

People often ask if Missions are any good — I think 
ungenerously. The work is always disheartening, 
not from wickedness in the teacher so much as from 
the total failure of the savage. We cannot raise him 
all of a sudden to the plane which we have only 
reached through many centuries of upward growth. 
He never attains the status of our manhood, the base 
on which rests our Christianity ; and our religion 
vields but a sickly crop outside the boundaries of the 
Caucasian field. Meanwhile the missionary, a good 
man, and his wife, more useful than himself, preserve 
the savage from death by contact with our civilization, 
teach him all he can learn, heal his sickness, comfort 
him in trouble, and keep him out of mischief when 
otherwise he would be out on the war-path scalping 
our scattered laity. 

Even with no conversions a year the missionary, 
loneliest of pioneers, remotest of frontiersmen, is a 
living protest to Heaven that we whites are not wholly 
ruthless towards the weaker brethren. If our gifts 
to the heathen were limited to trade guns, gin, and 
fancy diseases, not one of us would be able, when the 
[137] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 
time came, to curl up and die without the most horrid 
apprehensions." But with ever so little love the work 
tells. On Easter Sunday I brought into church a few 
young buttercups picked up from the skirts of the 
snow. Afterwards, between, the services, I lay on the 
grass under the sunlight, very sleepy, listening to 
the mountains, which now in full chorus of torrent 
and avalanche thundered their great song of the 
spring triumph. And when I rang the bell for even- 
song, all the little children came to me laden with 
flowers. These I laid upon the altar. 

My work was done ; but as my own endeavors fell 
so far short of the ideal, in justice to the Missions I 
must speak of better men who fought a greater fight 
among the tribes of that region. Mr. Dash, for in- 
stance, being a missionary broken loose from his 
church, and without any visible means of support, de- 
sired to work among the heathen, paying his own way 
by running a stock ranch up one of the northern 
valleys. Therefore he managed to scrape together a 
bull and cow, a he-goat and she-goat, a cock and 
hen, and with these, on rafts built for their trans- 
port, set off, attended by his family, up an especially 
wild river. After some arduous days the cow raised 
[138] 



THE TRAIL OF THE MISSIONARY 

objections to the proceedings, threatened to smash up 
her raft, and had to be tied to the kitchen stove. This 
was unfortunate, because when the raft capsized the 
stove anchored the cow to the bottom. Later on, the 
hen got spoiled also, and likewise the she-goat; but, 
nothing discouraged, Mr. Dash started his stock 
ranch with flocks and herds consisting of three items 
— a bull, a cock, and a billy-goat. Somehow the 
Cock and Bull ranch was not a success, and, besides 
his large family, the reverend gentleman had to sup- 
port several devoted native retainers — these being old 
folk long past work, and given over to Christianity 
by their thrifty relatives. Mr. Missionary moved 
farther down the river, where by labor and contrivance 
he managed to set up a sawmill and a cannery. Few 
were the customers, small the sales, but so much more 
daring the enterprise. Hunting with his sons he got 
bear, deer, and other large game in the mountains, 
wild fruit from the forest, plenty of salmon from the 
river. These, each in their season, he tinned at his 
cannery, providing food for the household all the year 
round. 

So the lights of a village glow in the depths of 
the forest, a bell calls across the snowdrifts, and a 
[139] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

Mission has been founded after that irregular, schis- 
matic, and unworldly Example once set in old Galilee 
of the Gentiles. 

But this gentleman is not the only capable mission- 
ary who has camped on the trail of the savage. One 
famous specimen I knew used to keep a harem, mur- 
der babies, and bury his victims in nail kegs among 
the cabbages ; but I would rather speak of the hero- 
priest I met at Hesquiat. The holy Father was quite 
young when he was sent to convert the folks at Hes- 
quiat. The doctors said his talk was all rot, but his 
magic dangerous. He had a little black box with one 
eye. This he would point at the folk, and the eye 
winked, then pimples broke out on their faces, they 
sickened and died of the magic. The whole tribe fled 
into the snow-drifted woods, leaving only the dying, 
the dead, and the holy Father with his box of magic. 
They prayed hard in the woods, but the pestilence 
was among them. The Magicians rattled and howled 
to scare away the Evil, jumped on the chests of the 
sick to stamp out the Devils, but still the people died. 
The Chief was dying in raving madness when he sent 
his little daughter to fetch the priest. He came, and 
standing at the door of the brushwood shelter, lifted 
[140] 



THE TRAIL OF THE MISSIONARY 
up his hand, saying, " Pax Vobiscum." But the mad 
Chief had a fowling-piece, and the hand which was 
raised in blessing came down bloody and riddled. 
Without a word the priest walked down to the water, 
and was bathing his hand, when a second time he was 
shot full in the back. He fell down half in the water, 
half on the snow. The people were angry, they 
would have killed the mad Chief, only the priest called 
out to them to be " merciful." 

For many days the Father lay raving of " mercy," 
a new word which the women could not understand 
who nursed him. It must have been a strong magic, 
that unknown word, for from the time it was spoken 
the pestilence altogether ceased from killing the 
people. 

After a long time a Bishop came up the coast, and 
he had a little silver cup from which he gave strong 
medicine. The priest lived. The Bishop wanted to 
take the Father away, but he would not go, begging to 
be still left with his people. Since then he has taught 
them aM to understand the word " mercy," and they 
have tasted the strong medicine out of the little cup. 

To return now from great matters to my own very 
small cencerns. 

[141] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

It had taken me ten weary days to climb the Skeena 
torrent from tidewater, but shooting that long rapid 
by canoe was now a very dream of ease. I had seen 
no white man's face as yet that year, and at last had 
a friend for company. We squabbled like cats, save 
only when we stewed in separate gloom. (The ex- 
iles of that most lonely region are rarely on speaking 
terms. ) We "camped in the big timber among cana- 
ries and humming-birds, swept down the sumptuous 
curves, shot the big canyon, paddled through lanes 
among a thousand isles, watched the seals playing all 
sorts of games in the water; and always above us 
hung forest and precipice, the glaciers, snowfields, 
the heaven-piercing peaks which walled that chasm. 
When a canoe feels the first break of a rapid, and 
quivers from nose to tail ere she takes the plunge — 
I cannot be expected to share up that memory 
with strangers. We came with reluctant paddles to 
salt water, and camped among the perfumes of 
Spukshuat. 



[142] 



IX 
THE TRAIL OF THE SAVAGE 

WHEN I came out from the Skeena valley 
I was sick of being a missionary. At Vic- 
toria the Diocesan Synod gave me a suit 
of clothes, seventy-five dollars, and the offer of further 
training for Holy Orders. But I had need at the time 
for study in geology, history, folk-lore, and other 
matters tending to an understanding of the facts in 
sight; so settled down at Victoria, wrote books, and 
contributed these, as they matured, to local papers at 
two dollars and a half a column. My editors hoped 
that this ridiculous arrangement of paying for their 
padding would not be regarded as a precedent. 

I only " settled down " in moderation, and under 
protest, because that year of study was broken by six 
months of delightful holidays, taken when chances 
arose for further travel. An Indian agent, who was 
interested in corpse-eating and other polite habits 
among the tribes, whistled for me from Comox. I 
came running, and found him impatient, with his 
[143] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

canoe, his constable, and an Indian, ready for a voy- 
age among the Quagutls. We set out from Comox, 
pulling northward up the Gulf of Georgia from two 
in the afternoon until two in the morning, when we 
had an hour's nap in the canoe. Dawn broke over the 
needle-peaks and ice-fields of the Coast Range, the 
sun flushed the high snows on the Vancouver alps, and 
up the deep blue channel between the ranges we pulled 
on doggedly against the tide. When we got into the 
entrance of Seymour Narrows the main tide was run- 
ning eleven knots, the back-water eight knots, and be- 
tween these racing sluices we were caught in a series 
of whirlpools. I have a vague recollection of the 
canoe being spun like a top, while the other fellows 
howled anathemas at me, but, being asleep at my oar, 
was unable to attend to their troubles. The Indian 
agent contrived our deliverance, and shooting across 
the back-water we swung into a bay, where we camped, 
having rowed some thirty-six miles. At our camp- 
ground the straight pines, from twelve to fifty feet 
in girth, went up two to three hundred feet aloft, and 
in the shadowy aisles of that giant forest the ground 
had been torn up into a muddy yard by trampling 
herds of elk. 

[144] 



THE TRAIL OF THE S A V A G E 
On the next stage of our journey we came to the 
canoe pass of Seymour Narrows. Here a large tide, 
trying to pass through a small channel, piles up into 
a cataract about eighteen feet in height. We camped 
for dinner, and when we embarked again the tide was 
spent, the water lying like green grass in the dead 
slack of the ebb, as we paddled gentty through. With 
the rise of the flood-tide shortly afterwards the cata- 
ract re-formed from the opposite direction eighteen 
feet high, and falling to the northward. There are 
three of these salt-water cataracts among the chan- 
nels of the Archipelago. 

In those days the agent and I had much ado with 
the constable, who had a private grief and desired to 
die. We did our best to help him, for when we dug 
shell fish, and he dubbed them poisonous, we gave 
him the most generous portion. Yet he thrived. At 
night the tide would play unexpected freaks, washing 
us out of camp ; on one occasion drowning our kit- 
ten, a pair of gum boots, and a tin of sausages. So 
death might have taken the constable, and yet, much 
as he longed to pass awa}', his bed was always highest 
up the beach. We came in time to a village of the 
Euclataws, who lately had murdered and burned the 
[145] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

crew of a coasting sloop. There we might have 
camped and been massacred, but the constable, greatly 
as he craved for release from this vale of woe, insisted 
upon our setting forth from the pernicious village. 
A strong gale was blowing, and as we skirted the 
north coast of Vancouver's Island that night, our 
canoe came near to swamping ; indeed we should with- 
out doubt have perished but for the heroic labors of 
the would-be suicide. For many days we threaded 
the mazes of the Broughton Archipelago, calling on 
the worst tribes, searching for perils, that the con- 
stable might demise in search of a better world; but 
the cannibals eschewed him, the waves rejected him, 
he fattened on poison, and was bullet-proof. His was 
a charmed life, and no doubt he still survives to cheer 
his friends with prospects of his untimely fate and 
desired obsequies. 

At the Quagutl villages I was curious to know why 
the coffins of the dead were slung in the tops of trees, 
and all the branches stripped away beneath. The 
agent explained that this was a proper and reasonble 
precaution, to save the bodies from being stolen away 
by cannibals. This opened up a curious field of 
inquiry. 

[146] 



THE TRAIL OF THE SAVAGE 

Among savages, as with ourselves, the Healers and 
the Destroyers form important castes, but to practice 
either as a doctor or as a soldier the candidate has to 
perform certain religious rites. Thus the Red Indian, 
before claiming warrior's rank, must go alone naked 
into the wilderness, and there devote himself to fast- 
ing and prayer, until he receives a visitation, behold- 
ing the Great Spirit face to face. One may find de- 
tails explained in the Book of Genesis. The Great 
Spirit reveals to the Indian lad his " wampum," 
maybe a stick or a stone, to all appearance, which is 
to be his talisman and guard him from all assaults of 
death. Thus fortified, he returns to his tribe, and 
after prayer submits himself to the ordeal by torture, 
which, if he pass unflinching, gives him the right to 
bear arms. I have seen these mysteries. 

On the Skeena I witnessed a different rite, for there 
the ordeal by fasting admits to the priesthood only — 
the Order of the Healers. The Doctors came in pro- 
cession out of a great cedar house, dressed in their 
ceremonial robes, and singing to soft drum-taps a 
chant of such wild beauty that no man can hear it 
without being deeply moved. Looking steadfastly 
out upon the river ice, we presently saw figures of 
[147] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

naked men hopping in strange mimicry of the tribal 
beasts from whom the clans were named. These, 
called by the music, drew near, entered the group of 
Doctors, and were given robes. 

A horrible variant of these rites is the calling of 
Destroyers among the Quagutl tribes. The candi- 
dates, performing the Ordeal by Hunger, are sup- 
posed to encounter a loathsome spirit, the Ha-mad-si, 
who lives entirely upon human flesh. To be like him 
they then come to their native village naked, ravenous, 
to devour live dogs and to bite the tribesmen. Above 
all things they must prove themselves bej^ond human 
feeling, and in better days used to kill and eat a 
slave. Now that the white people have abolished 
slavery, the initiates must still perform the ordeal — 
so a body is stolen. My journey with the Indian 
agent and his constable was made for the purpose of 
getting proof that the custom still existed among 
those Quagutl savages. We failed, but when our voy- 
age ended at Alert Bay, I learned that the Ha-mad-si 
had been delayed until we should take our departure 
from the district. This nettled me, so, borrowing a 
canoe, I set out with an Indian for Mamalillicullah, 
the village where the feast was to be held. Travel- 
[148] 



THE TRAIL OF THE SAVAGE 

ing by night through dim channels, we paddled softly 
to an islet abreast of the village, and there lay hid, 
waiting for the beating of the drums in token that 
the function had begun. Three days we lay hiding, 
and, as I learned afterwards, were closely watched. 
When at last I realized that the Indians were await- 
ing my departure, I felt that their annoyance must 
be keen, and that any appearance of secret flight 
would encourage them to come after me with guns. 
So, to show there was no ill-feeling, I strolled through 
the village by daylight, and made my leaving con- 
spicuously slow. That made the people think I was 
the Government. 

On my return from that quest to Victoria, I had 
the pleasure of charging the Indian Department with 
propagating corpse-eating, drunkenness, scrofula, 
massacres, and other delights, among the native 
tribes ; caused rude awakenings in official quarters ; 
and won for myself a handsome collection of private 
enemies. 

My second journey that summer was made with 

the Big Chiefs of the Hudson's Bay Company on a 

steamer chartered for a tour of the British Columbia 

coast. As this region is still unknown to tourists, and 

[149] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

surpasses all known seaboards in its grandeur, I crave 
indulgence for a paragraph on the scenery of one of 
the sixteen fjords. These outrank the Sogne and 
Hardanger fjords of Norway, but Knight's Inlet had 
not then been visited by a steamer for nearly twenty 
years. We had anchored at the entrance overnight, 
and when the day broke were unable to move because 
the place was densely veiled in fog. At ten o'clock 
this lifted with the swiftness of an explosion, and we 
steamed up a tide race two miles wide. For the first 
mile of their height the walls were clothed in jungle, 
though headlands stood out in naked ice-crowned 
precipice. Barring the way ahead rose a cliff some 
five thousand feet high, its brow a cornice glacier 
shining like some long emerald, from whence fell a 
lacework of diamond cataracts at least two miles in 
width. On the left rose a crag of pale gold as high as 
Snowdon, sheer from the sea, through cloud-belts, to 
a crown of needle spires. Swirling between such walls 
the channel swung, disclosing a lane of deep green 
water reaching away into infinite distance. The 
heights of mingled precipice and forest, glittering 
cataract and hanging glacier, went up to hoary 
stacks of snow-streaked rock, their white crowns stark 
[150] 



THE TRAIL OF THE SAVAGE 

against an azure sky. So the dark gorge winds on in 
impenetrable shadow, while above the long avenue of 
peaks melts away into mists of light. 

From that I must turn reverently away, and leave 
the funny little steamers, the exquisite canoes, and 
all the tender memories of savage life. The next ad- 
venture led me towards the Arctic for a dabble in 
piracy. 



[151] 



THE TRAIL OF THE YOKOHAMA 
PIRATES 

THE Adele was a fifty-ton schooner, readily 
pulled with oars, needing a crew of three 
men. She carried eleven. She was built in 
China, owned in Japan by Germans, and had British 
registry; but nobody was responsible save her Nor- 
wegian master, while, with five national flags in her 
locker, she played tunes on the teeth of the law. The 
Japanese, Russians, or Americans would have made 
her prize of war amid official rejoicings; but she was 
wary of traps, and her skipper, hard to catch, was 
known as the Flying Dutchman. Once, when I sug- 
gested that her proper flag was black, he called me a 
fool, and remarked that those old-time pirates were 
lacking in business aptitude. 

The Flying Dutchman, drunk, consented to ship 
me for a voyage, the Flying Dutchman, sober, tried to 
back out; and drunk or sober would not sign me on 
[152] 



YOKOHAMA PIRATES 

at the Custom House, so we arranged that I sail as 
a stowaway. 

As to where we were going, or what was the game, 
I had not the least idea. I thought the Adele was a 
sealer, but my friends in Victoria were derisive when 
I talked of a sealing voyage to Behring's Sea in 
November. At that time of year the fur seals were 
basking down somewhere in the tropics, not wreathing 
themselves with the ice of an Arctic winter. That 
puzzled me, but the voyage was sure to be pretty good 
fun, and a decided change of air. The Adele ar- 
ranged a plot for sailing without me, so I went down 
and camped on board. 

We weighed, all hands drunk, and at midnight, 
we being then in the Straits of Fuca, the skipper 
made a very pretty demonstration after the manner 
laid down for use on discovery of a stowaway. After 
each burst of eloquence, I favored him with an en- 
gaging wink, giving an edge of reality to his per- 
formance. He signed me on as an ordinary seaman 
at ten dollars a month, and sent me off to the fore- 
castle. When he came on deck at sunrise he found 
me coiled up on his sacred quarter-deck reading a 
novel. 

r 153 1 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 
I meant no harm. In the glory-hole forward I 
had found a rich air proceeding from oilskins, sea- 
boots, human interest, and an expired lamp, also bales 
of stockfish, decayed sea-oil, petroleum, tar, and bilge- 
water. Sea air always making me ravenous, I was 
drawn aft by the perfume of approaching breakfast, 
and that novel was only a blind behind which I sniffed 
and hoped. 

To the underfed, overworked, maltreated British 
deep-sea sailorman, let me give this heartfelt advice 
— try a pirate. The food was sumptuous, served 
watch and watch in the after cabin, and we all got 
fat. As to the glory-hole, where six of us lived in 
such rich air, there was no sorrow. No landsman 
realizes the forecastle, or what real sailors are. The 
absolute honesty, the striving for cleanliness under 
difficulties, the mutual toleration, the brotherly gen- 
tleness before the mast have grown in a community 
which has no rights, whose wrongs are all grown old. 
I have seen little of beastial attributes as described 
by owners and masters, nothing of the jolly Jack Tar 
business, the very mention of which makes a sailor feel 
sick ; but I have observed in many voyages a pride of 
craftsmanship, quiet courage, patience, endurance, 
[ 154] 



YOKOHAMA PIRATES 

generosity among men who are treated worse than 
farmyard swine. 

Not that I was treated like the swine, indeed a 
brother of the Lost Legion always finds Home before 
the mast. The same queer home-feeling comes over 
sailors when they stray among troopers, or gold- 
miners, or any kind of frontiersmen, for all are of 
one tribe. I was treated as a younger brother, every- 
body helping me to learn the trade, and, clumsy as 
I was, the seamanship ran in my blood by heritage. 
As to seasickness, I think that usually comes from a 
defective balancing of the body, and the poise of the 
horseman, cyclist, or canoeist, as applied to a rolling 
deck, is prevention absolute. I cured it the first voy- 
age I ever made, within one hour, and have been ex- 
empt from that time. 

Somehow, although unobtrusive and harmless, I had 
got to be known in Victoria as the " Mysterious 
Pocock"; and on board the Adele nobody could be 
induced to believe in me as an " ordinary seaman." 
I was reported from the first to be some sort of evil 
spy or detective, and my shipmates would rather have 
sailed with the devil. No " ordinary seaman " would 
have a camera in his dunnage, and that one-eyed black 
[155] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

box was peculiarly offensive in taking evidence on 
board a pirate ship. All hands had sworn its destruc- 
tion. Therefore I made a photograph of each man 
separately ; but the cook, being recalcitrant, I smoked 
out with a sack down the stovepipe, and his portrait 
proved most expressive. Sweet are the uses of human 
vanity, for now no man on board really objected to 
that instrument, though all vowed still to destroy it. 
They also determined to disable me as a spy by 
marooning me upon some desert island. I always had 
misgivings when we came to a desert island. We 
landed on the outer coast of Vancouver's Island to cut 
a number of handy clubs in the forest. We landed at 
the Shumegin Islands, watered the ship, and bought 
two dories, flat-bottomed boats, in exchange with a 
trader for gin and potatoes. Still I had not guessed 
the purpose of the voyage, and nobody told me, be- 
cause I was a " spy." We had a shooting trip there 
on the Arctic tundra, and with our revolvers killed a 
number of salmon. That country consists of grass- 
clumps, the size and height of dinner-tables, scattered 
on a field of mud. In the mud run little streams where 
the salmon lay asleep, and once awakened they made 
good hunting, for they swam with lightning swift- 
[156] 



YOKOHAMA PIRATES 

ness. That night was the skipper's father's birthday, 
celebrated with a display in the cabin of thirty-five 
lighted candles, and a general drunk fore and aft. 

Greatly refreshed, we put to sea, running through 
the Shumegin Islands, which are the best hunting- 
grounds left fcr the almost extinct sea-otter. Far 
to the north loomed the white alps of Alaska. We 
overhauled our mitts, sea-boots, oilies, ready fcr hard 
usage to come, and so, b}^ a passage through the 
Aleutian Islands, entered Behring Sea. 

Some two hundred miles north of the Ounimak Pass 
we sighted the Pribyloffs, and heading for St. George 
Island bore away under black lava cliffs in the midst 
of a driving squall. The hail whitened the decks. 

" A man running along the cliffs, sir ! " The mate 
had field-glasses. 

" The son of a gun ! My glass, quick," said the 
Flying Dutchman. 

" Yes, dot vash so, the yumped up son of a gun. 
Stand by the anchor, there ! All ready ? " We had 
opened South West Bay, and came up all fluttering. 
" Down staysail ! Down yib ! Let go ! " and down 
plunged the anchor. 

The skipper called the boy. 
[157] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

" Tom, go get 'em each a good horn of yin." 

" Four men coming out of the shack yonder, sir ! 
They seem to have rifles ! " 

The skipper whispered confidentially to the bin- 
nacle something forcible between his teeth. Then, 
" In sail, and out with the dinghy," while the mate 
called for volunteers. 

" I'll go," " And I," said Sven the Swede, and 
Dave. 

The boy was up out of the scuttle with a square- 
faced bottle, which passed. The skipper jammed a 
gun into his hip-pocket, dropped over the side, and 
presently we watched the boat bubbling up and down 
as he headed for the surf. The four men were load- 
ing their rifles. Then I began to notice that black 
dots were swimming about all round us, the heads of 
fur seals. They were leaping and throwing themselves 
for fun, they ca.me up close alongside, whooping 
" Pooh ! " derisively, and wagged their hind flippers 
as they dived. 

They swarmed about the boat, playing with it as 
though they had found a new toy; indeed one, grip- 
ping an oar-blade in his teeth, held on like a puppy 
to a root until the man missed stroke. The guard 
[158] 



YOKOHAMA PIRATES 

ashore had leveled their rifles ready to open fire, and 
down came another squall. 

When the air cleared, the skipper was ashore, hav- 
ing a pleasant chat with the Aleutian guard, while 
a bottle of gin settled down on its orbit in the most 
natural friendly way. He had been driven out of 
his course for Petropaulovsky with a broken binnacle, 
lost reckonings, and a leak. The Aleuts would have 
him understand that they were Government, United 
States Government, that he must not come ashore, that 
they did not drink — but still the bottle passed round. 
They had already sent a man to warn the village just 
across the island — we should be attacked in a minute, 
because they were Government. Yes, they might have 
time to finish the bottle — they finished the bottle. 

" I suppose," said the skipper, looking innocently 
about him at the seal herds, " that you think I came 
after sealskins ? " The Aleuts were smiling vigor- 
ously, as, with an affectionate farewell, the skipper 
jumped into the dinghy and shoved off through cream- 
ing surf. 

The plan was to lure the Governor of the island on 
board with sufficient men, get them drunk, then land 
and raid the warehouse. But night was already fall- 
[159] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

ing, and soon we had other matters needing most 
serious attention. 

I stood anchor watch from six bells to midnight, 
with orders to report to the mate any change of 
wind. 

It was blowing a strong gale, but we lay just 
within shelter, screened by one of the points of the 
crescent bay ; and though the sea was rolling white 
outside, I had no change to report when the seaman 
acting second mate relieved me. The skipper and 
the mate, drunk in the cabin, played cribbage, and 
argued as to our safety. The mate wanted to weigh, 
and get plenty of sea room. When the second mate 
took charge, I sat by the forecastle lamp reading, 
half curious concerning something which flopped 
about overhead, until Jim called me on deck. He 
had gaffed a fur seal on board, and we three played 
gravely, like sensible children, the seal a little shy* 
but not unwilling. There was a full gale blowing 
when I went below to turn in. 

" All hands on deck ! " The gale had whipped 

round that instant, and with hurricane strength swept 

in on the anchorage. The sea rose at us, the anchor 

was dragging, we were caught on a lee-shore. By 

[160] 



YOKOHAMA PIRATES 

the light of the surrounding surf we cast off the gas- 
kets, loosed the sails, and manning the windlass 
pumped on the brakes, broken sea voices croaking out 
the time, while the skipper and the mate squabbled, 
or fought drunkenly in the waist. The brake bars 
wrenched from our clutch, whole fathoms of chain tore 
out over the drums whenever the anchor fouled, bul 
inch by inch we sweated home that cable, still drifting 
bodily shoreward. Now we were lifting on lonp; 
combers, now sunk in the trough, still fighting with 
the strained brakes, pumping up and down, up and 
down, to the hoarse cries that kept us in time. Then 
with a wrench we were shaken off, thrown in all direc- 
tions from the brakes. The cable had parted, we 
were hurling along on the rollers, and it was " every 
man for himself." We began to strip. 

I noticed Dave, my chum, trying to sweat up the 
staysail, and wondered vaguely why he should take 
any more trouble. Suddenly the wind ceased, and 
looking up from my hold in the foreshrouds to wind- 
ward, I found we were in dead calm under shelter of 
a sea whose white crown shone high as the mastheads, 
and, as we lurched at it, the gleaming, curved black 
wall arched, closing overhead. I yelled to the crowd* 
[161] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

gripped hard, the sea came crashing down, my back 
seemed breaking under the blow, I felt the schooner' 
roll on her beam ends, crushed under, then, half- 
drowned, saw all hands heaped in the lee deck, their 
arms reaching up through white waters. The ship- 
righted, slewed round by the sea, came up to the windy 
the staysail filling — we were under way — we were 
saved ! Broken adrift, the main boom swung lurch- 
ing across the after-deck, but someone crawled to the 
wheel, steadied the helm, took charge, and, close as 
he dared to the wind, steered for the open sea. We 
jumped the rollers, wallowed in the trough, caught 
the gale again and steadied, chancing the reefs, get- 
ting rapidly under sail. 

Was it Dave with his sweating on the staysail, or 
the breaker which slewed us? We gave our thanks 
elsewhere. We gathered at the water-cask, all very 
thirsty, watching the wind in the close-reefed sails 
aloft, staring back full of wonder towards the loom 
of the cliffs astern, and men spoke gently like women, 
as we counted heads to see if all were saved. 

We had been fighting five minutes for life — two 
whole hours said the forecastle clock. One beam 
had been sprung by that breaker, but we had lost 
[162] 



YOKOHAMA PIRATES 

nothing — except the boat, an anchor, and the ship's 
discipline. 

We lay hove to, just beyond sight of land, waiting 
for the full moon before attempting to raid St. Paul's, 
the greater of the islands. The deck glazed over, 
the rigging was cased in ice, the wind blew a full gale 
at times, and the ground-swell in those shallow waters 
threatened at times to wholly demolish the Adele. 
Scrambling up and down the ice-clad deck to keep 
warm, with wet mitts rubbing animation into a large 
cold nose, bowled over occasionally when we shipped a 
sea, one could only be cheerful in a very moderate 
way. 

There were episodes. The flooding of the fore- 
castle, a draught of smoke down the stovepipe, or the 
dinner all adrift in the cabin, would furnish occasional 
themes for vigorous comment. Twice we sighted 
whalers homeward bound from the Arctic, plunging 
on the majestic heave of the green swell, their canvas 
crisp, white pearl against purple cloud. We had 
good cod from the banks which the seal frequented, 
or would meet those curious sea-people ostentatiously 
sleeping out a storm, flippers folded across the breast, 
lordly whiskers keeping their " watch on deck." The 
[163] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

whiskers failed to warn one of these young gentle- 
men, and we had him — like fresh pork with a strong 
flavor of cod — for a Sunday dinner. As to his heart, 
liver, and kidneys, they might have come from a 
sheep, and were delicious. The skipper had a severe 
attack of total abstinence, there being no more liquor. 

At the end of the second week, under a bright blue 
sky, and fresh breeze dead astern, we bore down, all 
winged out, on two white hills in the sea, which at sun- 
down grew to a snow-clad island with gently swelling 
downs. This was St. Paul's, the big city of the fur 
seals, where three millions of them spend the summer 
to feast on the cod banks, rejoice and fight in their 
harems, and teach their little puppies how to swim. 

We stood in the South West " Rookery " at dusk, 
and lay under the lee of the land, with darkened port- 
holes and a covered skylight, leaving the gear all slack, 
to readily get under weigh. 

Just abreast was the big rookery, the stench of 
which came down to us on the wind, bouquet of hen- 
run multiplied by X, together with an absurd babble 
of bleats, screeches, and dog barks. How enticing 
it was, the sound of many seal voices, calling across 
the water, sneering, coughing, deriding, with impu- 
[164] 



YOKOHAMA PIRATES 
dent mockery about us in the water, child mermaids 
bobbing up to screech " Po-o-oh ! " at the toy 
schooner, then darting away to hide. There was no 
surf, plenty of wind for flight in case the village at- 
tacked us, plenty of moonlight for the raiding, and 
room on deck for at least four hundred skins — a for- 
tune. So we all gathered aft and mutinied. 

The skipper had promised a written agreement that 
each man (except me) was to receive fifty cents for 
every skin that was taken. That was in Victoria. 
At the Shumegin Islands the promise was withered 
down somehow to twenty -five cents a skin, with no 
writing. Wherefore Mr. Bloody Growl, A. B., — that 
was only a pseudonym — put his baggage into one of 
the ship's boats, and rowed off casually with the 
laconic remark that he would go " fishing." The 
Flying Dutchman herded the gentleman home with 
a Winchester rifle ; but still a sore feeling remained. 
Nobody could see why half a dollar should so dwindle 
into a quarter. It might go on shrinking into a dime, 
or vanish away into a vague regret. On the other 
hand the skipper was shy, with a blushing reluctance 
to sign any written evidence of his peculiar business 
interests. When he went ashore to prospect, taking 
[165] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 
the mate, it was proposed that we slip cable and square 
away for Victoria. Could I navigate ? No, nor any- 
one else on board. 

The seals were barking and bleating and smelling 
to heaven around us, and the skipper came back with 
nineteen, which were put on deck snorting and dying 
dolefully, while we weighed, made sail, and stood sea- 
ward. So the snow-clad hills and foreshores of the 
land melted behind us. 

At midnight, when I went below for coffee, the skip- 
per asked me " was I one of the gang? " 

" How much do I get on each skin ? " 

" Same as the rest." 

" Then I'm with the gang." 

I never got a penny, but, moved by some feeling 
of importance at the time, consulted gravely with the 
council forward, who told me cheerfully to go to 
blazes ; so it was with a dwindling sense of importance 
that I curled my tail for a sleep. Thereafter I had 
the confidence of both the skipper and the mutineers, 
but kept my tongue tucked away. The cabin boy 
and I did watch and watch about for seventy hours, 
in sole charge of the ship, while the mutineers talked 
in the bows and the after-guard talked in the stern. 
[166] 



YOKOHAMA PIRATES 

When the mutineers came down to the cabin for meals, 
the Flying Dutchman ostentatiously cleaned rifles, 
eye cocked, ears up, and ready. He had five people 
aft well armed ; we had six forward with two revolvers 
— but the talk was much fiercer forward. 

The after-guard consisted of the skipper, mate, 
cook, hunter, and boy, enough to take the schooner 
into the " rookery," club a deck-load of seals, and 
share the resulting profit, leaving the mutineers to 
stew in the glory-hole forward. When this scheme 
was resolved on the mutineers were charmed. They 
would wait until the after-guard went ashore, then 
slip cable and square away for Victoria, leaving the 
raiders to be captured red-handed by one hundred 
Aleutian riflemen. 

I was fairly well pleased until the skipper decided 
on taking me ashore as one of the raiders ; but then 
I spent half the night sewing a pocket in my skin- 
coat for private papers, a tooth-brush, comb, and 
soap, which might prove a comfort in jail. Having 
a very real interest at last, I ventured to propose to 
both sides a basis for possible compromise. " All 
hands on the lay, three bits for cows, and one bit for 
brown and gray pups," that was the formula on wliick 
[167] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

a treaty was arranged during breakfast, except that 
I was to get nothing. The skipper shrewdly dated 
the agreement on Sunday, making it quite invalid. 

Of course it was an enormous satisfaction to know 
at last how to divide the spoils, although we had lost 
our only chance of successful raiding. 

Twice we bore down on the islands, to find ferocious 
surf loom through the darkness ahead, but we had to 
wait five weeks before another landing was possible. 
Behring Sea is shallow, forty fathoms at best, with a 
thousand miles in the clear for sweep of storms. The 
ground-swell lifts to an enormous height, greatest,, 
perhaps, of all the seas on earth. I have seen no 
spectacle of such dread grandeur as those gray-green 
ranges with their snowy crests. Sweeping down 
them had all the thrill of a toboggan slide or a water- 
chute; recovery for that small schooner seemed a 
miracle. After a month it got rather on our nerves, 
and Sven, the Swede, went gradually mad with fear. 
The weather grew colder, with snow or hail squalls 
hourly, freezing gales cutting across a deck which 
afforded no shelter. It was not easy to walk on the 
glazed deck, and a staggering promenade along the 
life-line was usually marred as a joy by green seas 
[168] 



YOKOHAMA PIRATES 

breaking in board. The schooner was heavily down 
by the bows with ice, a fairy structure glittering from 
truck to sea-line — perhaps fairies might have found 
her comfortable. The moon was on the wane, and the 
sea decently quiet, when at last, in a blinding snow- 
storm, we bore down once more on the South West 
Rooke^ of St. Paul's. We thawed out the windlass 
with boiling water, chopped out a few tons of ice, and 
got the anchor clear by the time we reached our berth. 

The dories were lowered, leaking like baskets; the 
<4ubs were handed down for murdering seals ; and eight 
men were told off for the raid, but claws in the scruff 
of my neck dissuaded me from landing. " No spies 
allowed ! " 

Until the boats came home I was ruffled and sore, 
but the news they brought wholly assuaged my grief. 
The surf was pretty bad, and beyond that, in black 
darkness, you came to icy bowlders. These generally 
turned out to be old bull seals which weighed a ton, 
and were as big as a church, promptly showed fight, 
and chased you into the water. The first boat, fight- 
ing back through the tide, was carried away seaward, 
and finally reached us just at the point of sinking. 
Then came the second boat, also in a sinking condi- 
[169] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

tion, with the cheering report that Sven, the mad 
Swede, had deserted, no doubt to bring the enemy to 
our undoing. The crowd, worn out, had coffee and 
turned in, postponing further trouble until daybreak. 
I took the anchor watch. 

Meanwhile Sven ranged along the shore, glad to 
escape being dismasted, burned, cast away, foundered, 
captured, shot, bitten by seals, or drowned in the surf 
— p,H of which fates he had predicted daily. When 
he got cold and tired he improvidently burned his 
s T : rt and oilskins, to make a nice fire and get warm. 
It was 2 a. m. when, pacing the lonely deck, I sighted 
thc.t fire, and made sure of an attack from the 
Aleutian village. Not that I greatly feared, for, 
during the evening, in the Flying Dutchman's boots 
and a torn oilskin, the cook had paraded the cabin, 
setting forth how, with a live coal and a keg of pow- 
der, he would discomfort all boat attacks — a sure 
recipe, he said, for Aleuts. Still, to make certain that 
the schooner was not visible, I made hurried survey of 
shrouded skylight and portholes. The cabin boy had 
carelessly uncovered one porthole, and that I 
smothered. Upon which Sven, rather chilly since his 
shirt went out, supposed we had sailed, and gave way 
[170] 



YOKOHAMA PIRATES 

wholly to grief. He thought of the flesh-pots and the 
warmth, he straggled back to where the schooner had 
been, and when in the breaking dawn he sighted his 
lost home, he let out yowls of joy. All the same the 
Flying Dutchman addressed him at considerable 
length by way of welcome when he came on board. 

At 5 a. m. the raiding began again; but the surf 
was worse than ever, the boats insisted on sinking, 
and as to the seals, there were very few left on the 
islands except the grim old bulls, which attacked every 
man they saw. One man only escaped by a plunge 
into the cool sea. Day broke, and when there were no 
seal carcasses to haul on board, I had time for hasty 
memoranda with the condemned camera. The village 
looked disagreeably close, with smoke rising from all 
the chimneys ; the American officials watched us 
through telescopes. They knew we could slip to sea 
before a boat had our range ; but still they seemed to 
take quite an interest, and it was nice for us seeing 
strangers after so many weeks of the lonely sea. 

It was almost noon before we weighed with seventy- 
five seals, gleaned from the almost deserted breeding- 
grounds. As we took in the boats one large seal 
raised himself from the deck to a man's height, then, 
[171] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

blinded with blood, swayed drowsily and fell, a 
creature so nearly human that we all felt like mur- 
derers. But the work which followed was much worse 
than murder, for as we stood to sea we skinned the 
carcasses, wading in blood and grease. The skin had 
to be flenched from a heavy layer of blubber, and what 
with the cold, the rolling of the deck, and the smell, 
I would gladly deny myself all the pleasures of seal- 
ing. We salted and stowed our prey, enough to re- 
deem the voA^age from total failure. 

The whole ship's company save myself had trav- 
ersed the Ounimak Pass on former voyages, but not 
one had seen the passage free from fog. As fogs 
are formed on the Newfoundland Banks by the meet- 
ing of the Gulf Stream with the Arctic Current, so is 
the Aleutian region clouded by a contact of the warm 
Black River from the Japan seas with the Arctic 
waters which flow from Behring Straits. Few men 
living have seen that volcano wrapped in almost eter- 
nal cloud which crowns the island of Ounimak. The 
land is under a curse, and no Indian ever camps there ; 
the fog lies heavy on the Straits, and the sealers go 
past without knowledge. But for a whole day the 
Adele lay becalmed in these mysterious waters, and 
[172] 



YOKOHAMA PIRATES 

for once the great Shishaldin rose in glory, white 
without stain, from the surf which rolled on his coast 
up to the delicate smoke which veiled his crown. 
Three mile-high alps, set in a triangle, rise sheer as 
icebergs from a level moor, and from their midst, 
nine thousand feet in air, lifts that rare, exquisite 
cone, perfect in contour. There is no other moun- 
tain in the world sculptured in so magical a perfection. 
We saw him last, hull down across the sea, setting in 
the north, kindled to rose and flame by the declining 
sun, and so went on, attended by fleets of the nautili, 
out into the wastes of the Pacific. 

Sometimes in the night watches of that homeward 
voyage, the Flying Dutchman would bring his con- 
certina, and squat in the starlight ringing out old 
Norse melodies^, wild, ferocious, triumphant, then of 
a sudden ghastly with despair. One could not see 
his foxy eyes and sensuous mouth, but only remember 
the daring, the seamanship, the generosity of this last 
of the Vikings. 

My pleasantest memory of him belongs to those 
night watches when, the music over, and the first yawn 
not come, he told me stories of misdeeds, the saga of 
the Yokohama Pirates. 

[173] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

There were twenty schooners, the Adele one of 
them, supposed to hunt sea-otter, really engaged in 
the robbery of fur-seal rookeries. The breeding- 
grounds of the Kurile group were destroyed, those of 
Saghalien and the Commander group damaged, de- 
spite the utmost efforts of Russian gunboats and 
garrisons. 

The raiders would get the Cossacks drunk, then 
plunder the warehouses, and put to sea with a load 
of furs worth a fortune. But there was also fighting 
every year, either with the Russian guards or among 
the raiders, and many a time a schooner put out in 
flight, her decks littered with dead and dying men. 
Captain Dan Maclean, captured by the Russians, and 
condemned to penal servitude, is said to have worked 
in an underground mine chained to a fellow-convict, 
and fed by means of a basket let down on a cord 
from the daylight. The other convict died, and the 
raider said he was three days chained to the corpse 
before his cries were heard. 

On the whole, what with fighting, captures, 

schooners foundered or cast away, and the heavy 

suasion of the Japanese Government, the Yokohama 

Pirates were fairty wiped out, and the Adele, sole 

[174] 



YOKOHAMA PIRATES 

survivor, was constrained to seek refuge at the British 
port of Victoria. This must have been about the 
year 1886. The Flying Dutchman now gave up 
" sea-otter hunting," and the Adele became a decent 
pelagic sealer, one of our sealing fleet. She was 
captured by an American gunboat, taken to San 
Francisco, and her crew tried amid much public ex- 
citement. There proved to be no jurisdiction, and 
the Adele was released; but the Flying Dutchman 
was very sore, because he had actually for once been 
committing no crimes whatever, and for the outrage 
of his capture swore vengeance against the United 
States Government. 

For five successive winters he raided the Pribyloff 
Islands, doing untold mischief and making plenty of 
money ; the fourth voyage, when I was with him, being 
a failure. On the sixth voyage the Adele was cast 
away, and her bones are bleaching on the Queen 
Charlotte Islands. When I last heard of the Flying 
Dutchman he was a miner on the Vancouver coast, and 
most gallantly led in the rescue of a shipwrecked crew 
cast away on some outer reef. Big fortune to you, 
last of the Vikings ! 

The night was resplendent under the full moon, 
[175] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

our sails pearl-white and all asleep against the deep 
sky. The swell breathed as though the sea were in 
slumber, the little craft its dream. Only the spray, 
flashing like diamonds under the forefoot, the ruddy 
light from the binnacle, the cold blue shadows sway- 
ing on the deck, the snowy gleam of planks, bulwarks, 
and spars, sharpened the picture into actual fact, 
which must otherwise have melted into those depths 
of sea and sky wherein we lay. Slowly the moon, all 
ruddy in a haze, went down, and foundered like a 
burning ship. Out of a pale, sweet light diffused 
along the east arose a star, the morning star of 
Promise, white on the brow of the dawn, soaring up- 
ward. Rose-flushed came the young day, conquering 
the heavens with flame-bright shafts of glory, then 
lifted a mound of dazzling fire, and the sun leaped 
clear from the sea. Along the pale-green swell, far 
in the northeast, glowed a violet film of towered, em- 
battled mountains. Day chased the night along its 
summits, when, in the utter stillness, the mate took a 
turn or so along the decks, and gave the salutation 
to the watch: 
" Land ho ! " 

[176] 



XI 

THE TRAIL OF THE PROSPECTOR 

jA FTER my return to Victoria I was quite 
/ ^L good for months, writing insipid stuff for 
J ^ the local Press, and behaving prettily at 
evening parties, while the Flying Dutchman, and the 
Bull Seal, a retired pirate, aroused the sealing com- 
munity against me. My harmless book on the Yoko- 
hama Pirates — afterwards scornfully rejected by all 
the publishers — had to be dictated secretly at night to 
a stenographer, who sat between locked doors and an 
open strong room, grievously alarmed. Coarse plots 
were hatched for my discomfort, and once my own 
chum, Dave, was sent to lure me into a drinking-hell. 
I had pushed open the door to enter, when a detective 
jumped from behind and grabbed me just in time 
to save me from being trapped. Failing violence, the 
Flying Dutchman made funny little conspiracies 
which ended in attacks upon my personal repute in 
the leading Canadian papers. Much as I liked the 
[177] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

little Viking, I sent for him then, and made him 
apologize on pain of the most disagreeable conse- 
quences. So we shook hands, and I was able after- 
wards to walk the streets unarmed. 

This tea-party period lasted until spring, when 
certain merchants subscribed to send me to the new 
mining-camps in Kootenay. I was to advertise that 
district in the Press, and, after the liberal Western 
manner, my backers handed me a check, giving no 
orders, asking for no reports, but trusting me to do 
my best in attracting capital to the country. The 
sun was shining, the birds were singing, when I left 
a Northern Pacific train at Kootenay Station in 
Idaho, and took the coach for the North. 

" I'm kind o' curious," said the stage driver, " to 
know how we're goin' to find Pack River. That ole 
river — she may be tearing the bones out, and again 
she may have gone down a piece. The bridge carried 
away on Monday, and she'd riz five feet more when 
I swum her yesterday." 

Once the wretched horse, sinking into a mud-hole, 

emerged half suffocated, and we went jolting on over 

stumps. Then the off-wheels, climbing a three-foot 

log, jolted me off the coach and wedged me inside the 

[178] 



THE TRAIL OF THE PROSPECTOR 

near fore-wheel. Being rescued, I got back to my 
seat, and we jolted on through the forest. 

The stage road came to an end at Bonner's Ferry 
in Idaho, a little frontier trading post where trappers 
in long-fringed deerskin hunting-shirts sat around 
thinking through the summer months. One of them 
was a guide, with a business in conducting " tender- 
foot " hunters, who went out with him but never came 
back, and lately his trade had slackened. 

A steamer had come over the road in sections, and 
plied northward on Kootenay River down to the Brit- 
ish boundary and the mines. 

From the mouih of the river, just north of the 
Canadian boundary, the big lake reached away some 
seventy miles, walled with high mountains. 

In the days of our grandmothers a canoe crept 
across that lake, and voyageurs of the Hudson's Bay 
Company camped on a beach of silver ore. Mining 
was none of their business, but the hunters saw what 
they took for lead among the ashes of their camp- 
fire. That is why they used to go there afterwards 
and make bullets, never dreaming that it was silver 
with which they filled their pouches. 

It was quite by accident that the Kootenay mines 
[179] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

were found. Some hunters camped on top of the 
mountains, sought pasturage among the snowdrifts 
for their ponies, and found — wealth. Across the land 
lav a belt of gorgeous ore, glowing vermilion and 
violet, marred only by dirty black patches of solid 
silver. Such is the ;i Silver King," and the news of 
the Hall Mines brought a rush of prospectors. Three 
years later, when I got to Kootenay, there were two 
hundred people in the Nelson Camp, and at least a 
hundred at the Warm Springs. I think I brought 
the first medicines into Kootenay, and certainly there 
was excitement when I produced a pocket-case of 
drugs to treat a man for a cold. He was so affected 
that he promptly went off on a drunk and got the 
horrors. There were a score of Englishmen in Nel- 
son, and I pricked up my ears at hearing my native 
drawl. But they were — except two old hands — cold 
to me, deuced chilly, because I herded with a lot of 
beastly American prospectors. 

The beastly prospectors steered shy of these pre- 
posterously useless idlers, who neither toiled nor 
sweated, nor looked pretty, but had puffed sleeves to 
their riding-breeches, and lived haughtily on remit- 
tances from their parents. The young Englishman 
[180] 



THE TRAIL OF THE PROSPECTOR 

needs half murdering with trouble before he learns 
any facts. I know ! 

By the earmarks and the brands of the herd, by 
their clear observant seeing with scant comment, by 
the free swing of shoulders which could not endure a 
coat, the lungs which abhorred a house, the hooked-up 
ready fingers, the tanned hide, the thrown-on clothes, 
the dust of the trails, these beastly prospectors were 
of my tribe, and I had found another cohort of the 
Legion. They suffered me gladly in every tent and 
cabin on the hills, included me in the conversation, 
told me the things always hidden from strangers. So 
I learned the trail of the prospectors, and, rather than 
tell my own very trivial adventures, I want to describe 
the trade. 

On the Frontier, where civilization is regarded as a 
taint, a " respectable " man might starve before any- 
body trusted him with money ; but when a frontiers- 
man is broke, and wants to explore for minerals in 
the wilderness, he readily finds some friendly saloon- 
keeper, or trader, to put up a grub-stake. This con- 
sists of a season's supply of flour, beans, bacon, sugar, 
and coffee, with arms, tools, blankets, harness, and 
pack animals. In return the speculator gets a third 
[181] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

interest as shareholder in every discovery. But the 
" free miner " does not face the appalling risks of 
travel all alone in countries where the mere straying 
of a horse, or sprain of an ankle, may involve a linger- 
ing death by starvation. Two or three partners make 
the little companies, which, like a ship putting out 
to sea, must depend on experience, judgment, and 
nerve for a safe return to mankind. 

One has to search for minerals usually where the 
slopes are a maze of dead- fall under the pines, and 
force a way through the underbrush, fighting a swarm 
of mosquitoes. One stubs one's toe on some lurking 
stone — a stumble over that, a muttered curse, a 
glance of reproach at the stone — it is stained with 
yellow carbonates ! Down with the pack, and the 
search begins up hill. There is more yellow " float," 
fragments are scattered here and there for perhaps a 
thousand feet. Then they cease, there being no sign 
of mineral above a certain line. On that line a cut 
must be made to bedrock, a trench opened, exposing 
the overfallen, iron-capped outcrop of a mineral- 
bearing ledge (reef). A city may result from that 
discovery. Above the cut a tree is blazed, and on it 
pinned an inscription : 

[182] 



THE TRAIL OF THE PROSPECTOR 
" Notis. — We Jock Brown and Tom P. King locate 
a mining claim known as the Grubstake mine and 
claims 1500 feet long, running 750 feet northerly 
and 750 feet southerly from this center stake, and 
300 feet west and 300 feet east, located this 16th 
day of July 1889. Jock Brown. 

" Tom P. King." 

Jock goes to the nearest Recorder's office, many 
days' journey perhaps, displays his mineral, pays 
fees, and makes record. Blind Tom holds the ground 
for both until Jock returns. After that so much 
work must be done every year or the claim lapses ; but 
let claim- jumpers go warily, because Messrs. Brown 
and King have rifles, and public opinion to back them 
if they kill. 

Such is the opening chapter in the history of a 
mine. Two hundred feet below the blazed tree a tun- 
nel is blasted into the mountain-side, fronted by a 
platform of broken rock where the ore lies in glitter- 
ing heaps. The platform, steeped in perfume from 
the forest, bathed in warm sunlight, is a playground 
for squirrels and butterflies ; and one may look out 
over the pine tops on range upon range of alps. Near 
[183] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

by is the forge for sharpening steel drills, and a path 
leads away to the cabin, deep-hidden in the woods. 

The sun has touched the logs with golden light, 
pools of blue shadow lie below the walls, and within 
there is cool dusk, the luxury of the brush-strewn 
bunks, the restfulness of a welcome. If the door has 
beon locked against bears, the key hangs near as an 
invitation to eat, tarry, and sleep, but to wash up and 
lock the door before leaving. 

One evening at the Grubstake, Tom was resting, 
Jock cooking supper and washing up the breakfast 
things. <; A prospector," said Blind Tom, glancing 
up at me through his bowed spectacles, " is a dam' 
fool anyhow. He lets himself out as a mule, he packs 
his grub and his blankets up ungodly steep hills, he 
works like a bull team opening up his claim, and then 
he sells out to a tin-horn capitalist, and puts up 
drinks for the crowd until he's broke. All the boys 
know he's a fool. Say, pardner," he called over from 
the bunk to Jock, who was parboiling bacon, " if this 
here transmigration of souls is straight doctrine — 
don't boil it all away, Jock, we aint got much — I 
guess I'll be an aristocrat in my next life, and run a 
gymnasium for young ladies." 
[184] 



THE TRAIL OF THE PROSPECTOR 

After supper Jock asked me : " Say, hev you got 
a penknife? " I lent mine with some pride, and he 
saw the pride. " Nice knife," he said, abstractedly 
thrusting it in his pocket. " Tom, I've made a knife." 

Both men watched me cynically, to see if I would 
bear the test, the sharing of all things in common. 
Theirs was a religion of action, coupled with skepti- 
cism, a sensitive honor towards all good men, while 
they cheat the eye-teeth out of a capitalist ; a life of 
self-denial, qualified by debauches; a love of the 
wilderness, which they curse obscenely ; courage, with 
lapses of hysteria. 

But in all the bewildering complexities of natural 
history that last is the strangest trait. Partners who 
love one another very deeply will quarrel after a long 
winter of their solitude. One fails to wash up the 
dishes, the other resents the neglect, and they squabble 
morosely for months. Then in a fit of hysterics one 
or the other gets shot through the heart " by acci- 
dent " — and profoundly mourned. A woman in 
hysterics laughs and sobs, but a man kills. 

The prospector is a fool of co_irse, because he finds 
the silver and gold for all nations, but himself goes 
ragged. In his trail come the experts and capitalists, 
[185] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

the working miners and chemists, to build an industry 
to furnish new blood for the arteries of commerce. 
So much has happened in Kootenay, now laced with 
railways, populous with towns, a theme of the Stock 
Exchange, an excuse for gambling in " Hall Mines " 
and " Le-Roys." A civilized community has arisen, 
a new district, big as England, is added to us. The 
prospectors were bought out, threw their trashy 
money to the winds, explored two thousand miles 
northward into the wilderness, discovered the Klon- 
dike, and a district as big as Western Europe is 
added to us. 

They are fools. Saint Paul the Apostle called him- 
self a fool, w ho, being a Jew, stayed poor ; who, being 
a Roman citizen, was not a shareholder, but left the 
soothing sport of persecution, and, like a modern 
prospector, was in journeys often, in labors, perils, 
and sufferings for things beyond money, intangible, 
of the spirit. The fool frontiersman, outcast from 
a civilization of grubs, lives near to nature, seeing also 
things intangible. 

When I had visited the claims in the explored dis- 
tricts of Kootenay, and done a little prospecting to 
know how it felt, I cajoled the prospectors into sub- 
I 186 ] 



THE TRAIL OF THE PROSPECTOR 

scribing a fund to advertise for capitalists, and spent 
their money on a journey to the city of Spokane in 
the neighboring State of Washington, where most of 
the large mines were owned. Spokane was very civil, 
giving me the freedom of the Mining Exchange, the 
run of the business offices, and having me interviewed, 
even in bed at midnight, for one of the newspapers. 
I was made father to such imaginings as seemed to 
mining men like ravings of lunacy, and got one re- 
porter sacked. But Spokane was only civil. Ad- 
vertise Kootenay ! Why, the mine-owners wanted to 
bribe me to silence. The discoveries must be kept 
dark until they could cheat all the prospectors out of 
their claims in those hills. 

So I was starved out, heavily in debt to the men 
-who had trusted me. It took me seven years to heal 
that scar. 



[187] 



XII 
THE TRAIL OF THE TRADER 

WITH three dollars left, and an hotel bill 
ripening swiftly, I came to an end of my 
madness regarding Kootenay. A Colonel 
entirely non-military had approached me on the sub- 
ject of a leaflet in praise of his bogus town-site known 
as " Columbia, Wash.," and destined to be the future 
metropolis of the West. I wrote the lies and he 
signed them, made a map which he improved with a 
fancy river scrawled across several ranges of moun- 
tains, then published the advertisement, and got fif- 
teen dollars in payment. The town-site purported to 
be terminus of a new railway, and on the date of pub- 
lication I was in the Colonel's office when a stranger 
called. 

" Colonel in? " he demanded. 
" You'd better wait," said the office boy. 
" I won't. Tell your Colonel that I'm the Presi- 
dent of the Y. P. Q. Railroad, and that if he doesn't 
[188] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TRADER 

withdraw his pamphlet by sundown I prosecute. 
Good-day." 

The pamphlet was withdrawn. 

A year before my visit the city had been burned, 
and on the blackened site stood now a new Spokane 
in massive buildings of granite, marble, and steel. If 
I could photograph those buildings, and produce en- 
graved blocks, they would sell readily to the mer- 
chants for use in advertising. So taking the nega- 
tives with my Kodak, I offered double pay to a pho- 
tographer for prompt delivery of copies. He saw 
shrewdly that there was money to be made with his 
own camera, and prudently daubed my negatives with 
wax, so that the copies represented Spokane in a fog. 
My solicitor was indignant at the trick. " You've 
got a perfect case, young man, a convincing case. 
Take my advice and — drop it ! " 

"Why?" 

" You'll get a verdict from which he can appeal, 
and go on appealing from court to court until the 
Day of Judgment. This is a free country, and 
there's no such thing as justice." 

Formulating a new scheme on the way, I called 
on the Editor of the Scarehead. " Spokane," said I, 
[189] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

" is giving an Exposition. — Give me a horse, with my 
expenses, let me ride over your district, and I'll write 
up its industries for a big special edition of the 
Scarehead. Of such an edition I can sell to the city, 
the county, the Mining Exchange, and the Exposi- 
tion Committee at least fifty thousand copies for free 
distribution as advertisements." 

The Editor consenting meekly, I arranged that the 
Mining Exchange should send a deputation to wait 
upon me at my hotel. To these gentlemen I explained 
the newspaper plan, and undertook during my ride 
to take a couple of hundred photographs depicting 
the industries of their country. 

" From these," I said, " I'll make lantern slides 
for illustrated lectures, praising your district, and 
only want the use of the Mining Exchange building, 
and a thousand dollars cash." 

These things being promised, I went, representing 
important interests now, to the Secretary of the Ex- 
position, and made offer of enlargements of my pho- 
tographs to form a picture gallery, together with en- 
gravings of the same to make a souvenir book. Terms 
being arranged, I returned, full of innocent joy, to 
get horse and equipment from my Editor. 
[190] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TRADER 

He said he had changed his mind. 

" Really ? I made up your mind for you, such as 
it is — why worry? I've promised the whole cit} r of 
Spokane to ride out on this business after lunch. Get 
the horse ! " 

He got the horse. Truly the animal was rather 
like a towel-horse in some ways, but the livery stables 
where I baited would charge the usual terms. The 
creature purported to be alive, and by pushing be- 
hind I might travel some miles in a day. The saddle 
was on a scale of splendor becoming to such a steed, 
and I was provided lavishly with funds for the first 
three days. Afterwards I was to live by collecting 
cash from defaulted subscribers, while I made a thou- 
sand-mile tour within the month, preparing at leisure 
a special edition, a lecture, a b°ok, and a picture 
gallery. 

Were there resources of land, minerals, or timber 
tributary to this city of Spokane? Yes. there was 
land, for I rode eight miles across naked desert before 
I came to a farm. The citizen, producing naught, 
held that land until the laboring community should 
give it value, and where there was a farm he sucked 
at the mortgage. There was mineral, but the citizen, 
[191] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

producing nothing, must rob the discoverer, steal the 
claim, and sell out. Meanwhile he convulsed the mar- 
kets with speculation in his paper shares. There was 
timber, but the citizen, producing nothing, arranged 
for hewing away his own trees and burning his 
neighbor's, until the mountains were stripped bare, 
and the gentle rivers were changed to destructive tor- 
rents, spoiling the water powers and reducing profit- 
able land to irreclaimable desert. 

As I rode a rotten horse for a rotten editor, on be- 
half of a rotten city which was giving an " Exposi- 
tion," slowly the word rolled over my tongue until r 
catching its flavor, I spat. An Exposition? an ex- 
posure, a show-up, a dead give-away, the pricking of 
a bubble, the bursting of a lie. In one large room of 
that city I had found partitioned off some forty offices 
of different firms. Sharing a watermelon among the 
gang, I had asked them to put up a general sign- 
board at the door, " The Robbers' Roost," or " The 
Fort}' Thieves Limited," at which device they were 
pleased. Three years ago when I passed Spokane by 
train, I found that the poor boom city had never re- 
covered from its Exposition, but visibly the place lay 
shrunken and stagnant upon the dusty Plains. For 
[192] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TRADER 

twenty thousand people, having neither a book shop, 
nor a decent bath, nor an} r manly games, had mis- 
taken their venture in calling it an improvement upon 
the desert. Vulgar, ignorant, unscrupulous, brave, 
enterprising, and cheerful, they built in speculation, 
not in labor, towers of dust to confront the winds of 
heaven. 

For three days I rode heartsick upon my hopeless 
venture, ashamed among the honest farmers at their 
harvest. I had stooped to the cheap methods of cheap 
men, become part of the froth upon the mighty waves 
of American endeavor. Envious of Yankee smart- 
ness parading in diamonds while I went in debt, I had 
been moved for just a week to play with rogues, and 
trump their shallow game, knowing all the while that 
a ferret can wriggle through smaller holes than a 
swindler, a fox teach shyness to a thief, or a skunk 
outbluff and outstink the worst of us. I had not the 
stomach to play such games for long, and now went 
sick with remorse along the sunny roads, envious of 
American manliness at work in every field reaping 
the wheat. But my heart was crying for the moun- 
tains, for the wilder country, the gentler men of the 
camps. At noon of the third day I wrote from a 
[193] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

village to my Editor, saying that his skeleton was 
feasting at the local stable, and might be collected on 
payment of the bill. Preferring rather to be a man 
on foot than a rogue on horseback, I set off to tramp 
for the nearest mining camp. 

The country was a flat desert, bounded by shim- 
mering mists of intense heat, its equator the railroad, 
and in the middle I found a house. There had been 
nothing particular to eat, and only hot puddle to 
drink, so to reach that section house for navvies was 
worth a struggle. Also I had two half-dollars, and 
much hope, when I knocked respectfully on the open 
dcor. Saluting the woman inside with lifted hat, I 
held out one of my coins, asking for a meal, at which 
she screamed, snatched up her baby, and bolted. 

I stood cut and looked at myself. A cowboy hat, 
a blue flannel shirt, blue canvas breeches, long boots 
past their prime — and one dollar. Yes, she had 
taken me for a tramp, for she shrieked, snatched, and 
ran. I was a tramp. 

There was a " construction train " not far beyond 

the house, which gave me food for one of the coins, 

and a ride which continued more or less until three 

o'clock the next morning, delivering me in reasonable 

[194] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TRADER 

repair at Coeur d'Alene Lake. I tramped on all day 
beside that lake, and up the river beyond. One wild 
animal I met on the track, and crept past him safely 
through a ditch, too poor to dispute the way. He 
was a skunk. The deer flicked their tails at me and 
ran, because they were venison and I looked so hungry. 
A family of cougars, papa, the missus, and the kids, 
snuffed at me on a bush-trail in the dusk, for they 
were famished and I smelt like food. At last, late in 
the night, I saw lighted windows ahead, and so reached 
a cluster of ruinous cabins known as the Old Mission. 

Now I had resolved to be a photographer in the 
Coeur d'Alene Mines, and was minded of a certain 
hireling whom I had fed at Spokane and left in charge 
of my baggage. He was a distressful and useless 
object, but if he joined me at Old Mission the luggage 
would do to pawn, and the youth might serve for a 
partner. So for three days I fattened at the Old 
Mission Hotel, running up a bill most patiently, 
while the hireling at Spokane, having endowed him- 
self with all my worldly goods, blandly decamped. 

It was a queer hole, the Old Mission, where I was 
fattening against future need. When the daily train 
drew up, a gambler used to attend on the platform 
[195] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

with a thimble-rig outfit and a pile of gold. Then his 
three partners came to play against him, winning 
at every guess, filling their pockets with wealth. 
Sometimes a passenger, seeing their luck, would ven- 
ture a twenty-dollar piece. He lost. A most re- 
spectable gentleman was that gambler, in clean linen, 
frock-coat, top-hat, and a benevolent smile ; but I 
think my inquisitive presence watching the game be- 
gan to annoy him after the second day, and so the 
whisper spread that I was a spy. On the third day 
I was openly accused in the barroom, and my laugh- 
ter at the charge turned to a sickly grin when I found 
out how real was the suspicion. 

That Indian Reservation, which I had crossed 
afoot, was on a near date to be thrown open by Con- 
gress as public land free to all comers. On its west- 
ern edge the farmers had gathered, led by a Mr. 
Truax, ready for a big rush and scramble to seize the 
ground. Coming from thence, I had blundered into 
an evil crowd of gamblers and desperadoes waiting 
on the eastern edge to drive the farmers away by 
force of arms, and themselves capture the Reservation 
as Mineral Lands. I was therefore a spy from the 
Truax gang, and the crowd determined to lynch me. 
[196] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TRADER 

It was very awkward. The least movement to- 
wards an escape would certainly hasten the crisis ; 
I was in pawn at the hotel ; my camera, endeared to me 
by so many similar associations, had fallen a prey to 
the landlord ; and, worst of all, was my nerve-shatter- 
ing alarm at the very idea of being lynched. That 
extreme sensibility to peril may be safely cherished 
as an inward grace, but on such occasions I always 
want to screech. It would never do, the very littlest 
privy expression of feeling meant the embarrassment 
of a necktie under one of the telegraph posts out- 
side. How was I to get my camera, evade the land- 
lord, escape these desperadoes, and reach the woods? 

A freight train was bustling about, ready to start 
for the mines; the long-shadowed sun shone out from 
behind a cloud, and that inspired cheek which has 
guided me through life flashed the solution. I turned 
with delight to the landlord. " Hello, here's the sun ! 
Get your family — come on, boys ! — range up out- 
side, gimme the camera — thanks — look prett}- — we'll 
have your photograph." 

When an angry Providence bereaved mankind of 
our tails, the piteous wound was salved with the gift 
of vanity. I got my camera, took a photographic 
[197] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

group of a benevolent landlord, a brushed-up family, 
and some beaming desperadoes, then with a hurried 
good-by caught my train at a run. Afterwards they 
understood, but the train had swung round a corner 
before they could fire. 

Presently the Conductor came along the empty flat 
cars, discovered me, and demanded a bribe. Other- 
wise he would pitch me off according to custom, and 
getting thrown off* trains is almost as bad as being 
hanged. "Will you?" said I. There is a philoso- 
phy of clothes, and the most hardened blackguard 
on the American railways has a wholesome fear of 
cowboys. As the Chinese terrify their enemies with 
paper tigers and wooden guns, so I always wear a cow- 
boy hat on the Frontier, and the Conductor doubted 
whether it would be quite wise to indulge in a 
murder. 

" I'll let you off," he said, " at one dollar." 

I had half a dollar, but no passion for sacrifice, so 
I got him to stand on the jumping flat car while I 
made believe to take his photograph. " I charge a 
dollar, so that's all right." And it was so. 

Late that evening the gravel train swung into 
Wallace, the capital of the Cceur d'Alene Mines. The 
[198] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TRADER 

town was then a place of fifteen hundred people s 
jammed at the meeting of four gulches in the heart 
of the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho. Just a month 
ago it had been totally wiped out by fire, but Western 
towns seem never to feel quite well until they have had 
their spring cleaning. Certainly Wallace was 
" booming." The masons and carpenters were work- 
ing double time, the canyon rang with constant noise 
of hammers, and, on the sixtieth day from the fire, 
the ground was covered not only with tents and 
shanties, but a litter of wooden houses and solid brick 
buildings all alike completed. 

Winter was setting in, and on the frosty night of 
my arrival I spent much time considering how to make 
my last half-dollar suffice for supper, bed, and break- 
fast. 

Driven for lack of a coat to seek shelter, I was in 
Denver Shorty's gambling-hell, subtly plotting econ- 
omies, when my thoughts were distracted by a puz- 
zling movement of the crowd. A man held a slip of 
paper in front of a gas jet, loudly challenging all 
comers to read what was written thereon. The words, 
written backwards, were easy enough to scan — why 
should all these idiots be wrapped in bewildered 
[199] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 
silence? Scornfully I read out the phrase, " What — 
will — you — take? " 

" Beer ! " answered the man with the paper ; 
" Whisky, in mine," said another ; " Wall, stranger, 
since you allude to the drinks," a third man saluted 
me gravely, " I think mine shall be a John Collins." 
" Cocktail ! " chirped a fourth. I had invited fifty 
men to drink with me. Slow, sad, severe, I left that 
warm saloon, no longer plotting economies. The 
supper, the bed, and the breakfast had flicked off be- 
yond my horizon. 

For three days I lived on my camera, which fetched 
three dollars, but when that was all eaten up there had 
to be some sort of crisis. For so respectable a com- 
munity, where bartenders and gamblers corruscated 
with diamonds, a tramp with no coat to his back had 
not the least chance of employment. So I went to the 
City Marshal. Would he request the Spokane police 
to collect the useless object who had sequestered my 
baggage? 

" Why, certainly," said the Marshal. " Meanwhile, 
young man, have you remarked that we're hav- 
ing a right smart snap of winter? Just you stray 
over to that dry-goods store on the corner, .rig 
[ 200 ] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TRADER 

yourself out with a suit of store-clothes, and tell them 
to charge it to me." 

I could not accept, but I have never forgotten. 

My baggage was gathered in by the Spokane 
police, and, better still, a magazine editor remitted me 
twenty dollars for some published ballads. The 
magazine was soon swamped in bankruptcy, but mean- 
while I was bloated with sudden wealth, no longer 
the tramp hunting for a job, but a capitalist seeking 
investments. The drink business was full up with 
fifty-five saloons, and the gambling-hells, dance- 
houses, and theater met all local requirements. 

There was in the whole place but one boarded side- 
walk, where free American citizens could walk secure 
from being drowned in the mud-holes. This densely 
crowded pavement was continued across a wooden 
bridge spanning the Cceur d'Alene River, and beyond 
that a railway skirted the bank, walled on the farther 
side by precipice. A thousand men came daily to 
that bridge for fresh air, and the solace of spitting 
into the river. Just in midstream the bridge made a 
slight turn, forming an angle. It would be easy to 
throw a plank across that angle and hang on out- 
side, dealing with mankind over the handrail. There 
[201] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 
was the best business-stand in the Coeur d'Alene 
Mines, and it had escaped the attention of traders. 

The City Marshal would not object — we consulted 
over a cocktail ; the county was' pacified, for I bought 
a five-dollar license ; but there remained the Committee 
of Public Safety, pledged to lynch bad men and to 
pitch out tramps like me. I called on Dan, Chairman 
of the Vigilance Committee. 

"Where?" he yelped. 

" The bridge," said I, very humbly. 

" You can't trade on the bridge." 

" Don't want to. Whose is the air over the river? " 

" If you want to trade there, take out a license 
from Heaven. 

"Will you interfere?" 

" No, I guess not. We never interfere outside our 
jurisdiction." 

In his capacity as a merchant, Dan sold me a stock 
of cigars; and with the Vigilance Committee for a 
friend one can commit all the crimes in the calen- 
dar. 

Next day, with a plank for a perch, hanging in mid- 
air above ice-drift and rolling bowlders, I peddled 
cigars across the handrail, but certainly was not trad- 
[202] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TRADER 

ing on the forbidden bridge. The original plank 
spanning the angle grew piece by piece into a plat- 
form, then I got two packing-cases, slung by wire 
nails from the rail, which served as counters for an in- 
creasing stock. To keep out the worst of the wind 
I contrived slight walls at the back and sides, to pre- 
serve my wares from the snow a roof poised over- 
head. Next came a dog-hole door under the rail, 
sliding panels of glass to close in the front, a stove 
for comfort, bedding to roll down on the floor, a 
kitchen equipment. At first the house had hind-legs 
reaching down into the river, but the question arose 
as to whether those limbs rested on the town land, 
county land, stood in the State of Idaho, or were 
amenable to the discipline of the United States. I 
cut away those compromising hind-legs, and with 
them went all danger of being dragged from my nest 
by ice-drift, together with questions of rent, rates, 
and taxes. Such levies could hardly be exacted from 
a house which occupied no human rights. The weight 
was so adjusted that the house poised itself without 
strain, swaying easily as a bird's nest in the wind, 
jumping gracefully when a cart shook the fragile 
bridge. 

[203] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

At the end of six weeks I was free of all debt, with 
plenty of credit, and one hundred and fifty dollars' 
worth of stock in fruit, tobacco, and sweets, laid by 
from my profits. 

By way of advertisement I displayed a blackboard, 
daily renewed with hieroglyphic designs, in the an- 
cient Egyptian style, relating to topics of the day, 
also doggerel verses, and in all the saloons rude de- 
vices painted with ink, which purposed to show kittens 
smoking my cigars, babies crying for them, pelicans 
stealing them, and desperadoes in full flight to elude 
the strength of their fumes. I was clearing three 
dollars and seventy-five cents a day. 

All these matters were observed by a certain tough 
who hung out at Denver Shorty's gambling-hell three 
doors off. This ingenious gentleman got a couple 
of pine trees stripped, squared, and thrown across the 
river just behind my house, the ends resting on either 
bank. On these timbers he began to run up a com- 
modious wooden building, a saloon. He laid his floor 
the whole width of the river, erected his scantling, and 
began to fill in the walls. But he had no possible 
frontage, so he went to the City Council, offering at 
his own charges to widen the bridge up to the foot 
[204] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TRADER 

of his wall. The City consented, and I was to be 
effaced. 

His timbers committed a gross trespass to the north- 
ward upon the Railway Company's embankment, and 
to the southward on the land of a tame German saloon- 
keeper. I tried to persuade these injured and ag- 
grieved parties to saw through the offending logs and 
drop Long Shorty's premises into the river. Un- 
happily the desperado was handy with a gun, and the 
victims did not feel sufficiently affronted. Moreover, 
my enemy was a citizen of the Republic, but I was 
only an effete and depraved alien Britisher, with no 
rights in heaven, or earth, or the waters which rolled 
underfoot. 

But the City Marshal was also a witness to these 
matters, and he it was who moved the Vigilance Com- 
mittee to a wide-sweeping movement against such 
crooks, thieves, deadbeats, and desperadoes as were not 
holders of property. 

It was quite time, for on the average seven persons 
a night were clubbed in the streets, or drugged in the 
brothels and robbed — indeed, one went abroad after 
dusk with a revolver in the side-pocket and forefinger 
ready on the trigger. So one day the leading citizens 
[205] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

gathered in twenty-five prominent criminals, and 
herded them down the gulch. All w T ho ventured back 
were to be riddled at sight, and those few who argued 
were promptly thrown into the river. For the rest 
of the day there was but one salutation in the streets : 
"Where did you hide?" 

Long Shorty went like a lamb, and all seemed well 
with the world. Then came the Baring crash in Lon- 
don, which smashed all our local banks. Half our 
population fled from the disaster-stricken town, my 
profits went down to sixteen cents a day, and I was 
constrained to fill up gaps in my system with a stick 
of candy for breakfast and a cigar for lunch. 

To go back a few paces : 

During my summer in Kootenay I had encountered 
the Little Blackguard, a swarthy Cornish miner. He, 
being very drunk, and mysteriously furtive, desired a 
business interview. Once settled down in my tent with 
a cigar he seemed not quite so drunk, but more fur- 
tively mysterious than ever. I was, he protested, the 
smartest man in the camp. Wh}^ so? Because I 
talked such infernal rot about mining that I com- 
pletely disguised my real and genuine knowledge. 
This was very smart, also the prospector's dress, a 
[206] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TRADER 

capital imitation — in fact, nobody had seen through 
me except himself. Of course I was the expert repre- 
senting some huge English syndicate. At my denials 
he winked with gravity. He had a business proposi- 
tion to make. 

"Is it honest?" 

" Sir, itsh a business proposition." 

"But honest?" 

" Sir, it is a legitimate businesh prop's'hon." 

"Honest?" 

" Shir, I tell yew itsh a puffeckly l'git'mit bushi- 
nesh prop'opVhon." 

" I see." 

He never broached the proposition, and that night 
skipped the country, pursued. 

I was still at the height of my brief prosperity in 
the Cceur d'Alene, when, boarding a local train, I 
met the Little Blackguard, who at once greeted me as 
the man who was much too honest to live. Yes, he 
would tell me the nature of that mysterious and 
furtive affair. He had been sent by a Smelting Com- 
pany as expert to report on the Queen Victoria copper 
claims, and his first move won, for the Noble Five who 
owned them, a handsome " option " in cash. His 
[207] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

private conviction was that their great crag of copper 
ore on the mountain-side was worth about ten cents. 
Anyway, his employers of the Smelting Company nib- 
bled, but failed to bite, so, with a view to waking them 
up, the Little Blackguard came to me with a proposi- 
tion. I was to be a bogus expert, and make a bogus 
purchase of the copper claims. This " straw bond " 
he would palm off on the Smelting Company for 
twenty thousand dollars, and we were then to divide 
the plunder. 

His rascality set me thinking. 

" Where are you bound for? " I asked. 

" The Gem Mine. I'm going to start a saloon." 

" Do you know you're an infernal blackguard ? " 

" That's no dream," he said gravely. 

" Will you make it a general store," I went on, 
u and come into partnership with me? " 

" You wouldn't trust me? " 

" Sonny, } r ou're blackguard enough to deal with 
these Gem miners." I did not think him smart enough 
to cheat me. 

" I'll go you, partner," said he. 

I must revert here to my liability to be mistaken 
for something dangerous, a spy, for instance, or a 
[208] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TRADER 

mining shark. As a special correspondent I was once 
in course of a single day mistaken for a cowboy, a 
doctor, a farm band, and a prospector. I bave been 
identified as Lefroy, tbe murderer, and Swiftwater 
Bill, tbe desperado. Once I was caught spying in 
a Russian fortress, and only escaped Siberia by pass- 
ing myself off as a lunatic. I was spying, but I 
passed very well indeed as a lunatic. In London I 
was once cheered for a Royal Highness, and in Wal- 
lace I was known to be the outlaw who had lately in 
Montana, single-handed, stopped and robbed an ex- 
press train. That reputation at the Gem Mine, 
coupled with the peculiar furtiveness of my new part- 
ner, would make a fine business combination. The 
whole Coeur d'Alene was famed for cowardly ruffian- 
ism, but the Gem miners were so much the worst, that 
all my repute as an outlaw, and all the Little Black- 
guard's watchfulness, scarce made it safe to locate 
in their town for business. 

The mine Management had a general store noted 
for extortion, and any miner who bought his goods 
elsewhere lost his job by way of punishment. Nat- 
urally the Miners' Union was incensed, and any men 
who dared to set up a rival business would get the 
[209] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

whole of their trade in defiance of the Management. 
Then either the Miners' Union store must be destroyed, 
or the mine closed for lack of hands. Two merchants 
of Wallace had offered me plenty of capital if I would 
open a general store at Gem. Before the train made 
that three-mile journey my partner had promised to 
become a member of the Gem Union, and introduce my 
proposals to the miners. A long, eager nose was once 
more pulling me into trouble. 

In the evening I waited, kicking my heels in a 
saloon until nearly midnight, before the Little Black- 
guard came out from the Gem Union meeting. There 
were graver affairs than mine discussed that night. A 
strike conspiracy was organized, which two years later 
flamed out into civil war. Knowing nothing of that, I 
was wonder-struck when at last my partner re-entered 
the saloon, ashen-white, trembling all over. He could 
not, dared not explain, but had mentioned my business 
to two gentlemen who would presently wait upon me. 
Indeed, while we were still talking, two miners strolled 
into the saloon dressed in the usual pea-jackets, slouch 
hats, and long boots. " This," said my partner, pre- 
senting me, " is the man who's too honest to live." 

I laughed as I shook hands. " This," I responded 
[210] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TRADER 

cheerfully, " is the gentleman who got run out of 
Kootenay." 

The Little Blackguard chuckled at the compliment. 
Not so the two gentlemen. I had insulted their 
" friend," and, turning on their heels, they walked 
off, declining my acquaintance. " There now," 
said my partner, " you've done it ! You've insulted 
the President and Secretary of the Miners' Union." 

So I went back to my bridge at Wallace, and the 
whole proposal fell to the ground — a scheme which 
would have involved me in an atrocious conspiracy. 
Two years later these gentlemen and their followers 
captured the twelve managing officers of the Gem 
Mine, herded them, shackled, through the gulch, took 
them to a lonely place, and there shot them down in 
cold blood. One man, badly wounded, escaped by 
swimming the river and hiding in the woods. -So 
began the Reign of Terror of 1892, so grave a busi- 
ness that United States troops had to surround the 
Coeur d'Alene District before they could put a stop to 
the butchery. 

Miners of silver, caterers to supply their needs, 
parasites preying on their vices; these, in perhaps 
equal numbers, peopled the six towns of Coeur d'Alene. 
[211] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

And this district had its being under the Laws of the 
United States, which are the Laws of the English 
seven times purified. The French-Indian voyageurs 
of old-time Canada discovered this lake and river in 
the remotest fastnesses of the Continent, and named 
them Coeur d'Alene. Now the law, seven times illu- 
mined with a rainbow glory, fell softly as rain upon 
this Heart of a Flint, and made not the slightest im- 
pression. Copious rain of the law, drought of obedi- 
ence, that is the mournful issue in many parts of the 
Republic. 

During my hibernating after the collapse of the 
town of Wallace, when I had little to live on and 
sucked my paws like a bear, my friends with one 
voice begged me to accept a United States citizenship. 
What manner of citizenship would it be? One had 
to judge of that from current examples. For in- 
stance, a leading citizen, with a large, flopp}' necktie 
and agreeable manners at church socials, had for 
partner a livery-stable keeper, and for property, 
among other things, an empty piece of land up the 
gulch. This tract was called the Y, and the Leading 
Citizen had no title to it except his broken-down fence. 
It was not his land by law. But there came an old 
[212] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TRADER 

man with his son, who, prompted by a prominent des- 
perado, saw fit to jump the Y and build a cabin 
thereon. The Leading Citizen got his partner to 
aid, went up to the Y, and found the old man and his 
son hard at work. He began by shooting the old man 
and clubbing the son. Badly wounded, and desperate 
over the seeming death of his boy, the father fought 
both assailants with a lion courage. He got one bul- 
let into the Livery man before the Leading Citizen of 
the floppy necktie and the agreeable manners inflicted 
four more wounds, all of them mortal. So the old 
man lay by the unfinished cabin, his white hair bloody, 
his face to heaven, dead, victim of deliberate willful 
murder. I happened to be passing, and joined the 
crowd of men which gathered silent about the body, 
when the Coroner appeared on the scene. " Well," 
said the Coroner, kicking the murdered man, " he's 
dead anyway." The crowd laughed. 

Two hours afterwards I strolled into the mag- 
istrate's office, where the murderer and the Judge, the 
Livery man and the witnesses, were sitting round the 
stove, spitting reflectively on its hot cylinder. The 
murderer was relating his recent experience blandly, 
as one might recount details of some church social. 
[SIS] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

An hour later that Leading Citizen was at large, doing 
his usual business, and was not thereafter disturbed 
by any formalities of the law. Should I be honored 
by an American citizenship? There was no justice 
within the scope of the law, but yet, outside of official 
machinery, there might be at least fair play. 

A miner came down from the hills. He owned a 
town lot which had been swept bare in the burning of 
Wallace, and, having saved sufficient money, proposed 
to renew the fence. No protection of law had saved 
his land from being stolen by a couple of Germans, 
who had built their cabin on the lot. To oust those 
Germans by law he would have to bribe the author- 
ities, and, perhaps, be driven from court to court, ap- 
pealing until he was beggared. He went to the Vigi- 
lance Committee, which, being an unlawful body, de- 
scended on those Germans like a whirlwind, pitched 
them into a pond, tore the cabin down, and scattered 
the remnants over the public streets. 

There were, then, some rudiments of fair play de- 
spite the Laws? That hope was very soon shattered. 
A Railway Company, lacking sufficient space for their 
yards, sent men in the dead of the night and jumped 
one of the main thoroughfares of the town. In the 
[214] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TRADER 

morning the people found their street stolen, occupied 
throughout by a railroad siding. Led by a saloon- 
keeper, who presented a keg of whisky for refresh- 
ments, the people assembled, wrecked a freight car 
across the line, and began to tear up the track. The 
Railway Company brought forward a train bearing 
three hundred men armed with rifles, but these, kept 
out of range by the wrecked truck, had to retire. By 
evening the people had cleared the street for traffic* 
Before next morning the track had been renewed, and 
was covered with heavy trains impossible to displace. 
Then the people realized that the merchants of the 
street had been squared by the railway thieves. Those 
merchants were members of the Committee of Public 
Safety, the only hope of fair play left for men in 
trouble. 

My friends were grave in their warnings : '* You'd 
better take citizenship." 

" I have taken the special military and civil oaths 
in Her Majesty's service." 

" Oh, that's all right ' Renounce them, you've got 
to, anyway, or jou can't be a citizen here." 

" What a noble thing to have at the mere cost of 



perjury!" 



[215] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

" Well, there are fees, too." 

" And this perjured oath is good enough? Perjury 
is a felony. What a wide net you spread to get 
proselytes ! " 

" Oh, we don't want you ! It's for your sake. 
Why, you don't belong to any secret societies, you've 
got no political friends, no mone}', you've had three 
gun troubles here already. What if you kill a man? 
Why, they'll make an example of you ! " 

" I see. By committing perjury I get a license 
to murder. What a citizenship ! " 

Oh, but I expected too much. I must not be so 
bigoted. This Republic was immense, not hedged 
like my native parish, effete, sluggish, unprogress- 
ive. 

My native parish is wider than all the seas, and 
higher than the clouds ; her ensign is a Holy Calvary 
whereon three crosses shine for Justice, for Mercy, 
for Good Faith. That freedom, that discipline, had 
spoiled me for Liberty, Equality, Fraternity — and no 
God to worship. 

That was all rot ! Couldn't I talk like a practical 
man ? This Republic was a big, wild country, but not 
yet settled down. 

[216] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TRADER 
Canada was a bigger, wilder country, where men 
went safe without a weapon, where aliens had human 
rights, where Judges were not bribed, Legislators not 
of the criminal classes, and honesty was not become 
effete. Canada had spoiled me, made me accustomed 
to deal with honorable men, healthy and clean, a 
sterling coinage of manhood, not crumpled rags. 
Already I had tested the methods of American 
" smartness," fouled rry honor, pitched the filth aside, 
and washed my hands, disgusted. When that small 
change has all been discredited, the " word of an 
Englishman " will still be taken at par on the world's 
counters. 

It was a decided nuisance being an alien with no 
rights to worry me, beggared gradually by the 
people's enmity towards everything English. The 
necessity of holding one's own with a revolver is 
specially obnoxious to a bad marksman, and most 
Britishers find the American code of dueling — kill at 
sight — rather too brusque to appeal to our sense of 
sport. For instance, a bad man robbed me, and was 
so extremely rude about it that I had to take notice* 
Living under an anarchy, possessed of no human 
rights, one has to take notice in person, and I was 
[217] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

too badly crippled to punch the gentleman's head. 
There remained the duel, so I got an Englishman from 
the Tiger Mine to act as my second. He lent me his 
revolver, but as we walked down to the scene of the 
trouble there arose the question of cartridges. I 
hesitated. " Could 30U use cartridges on — that sort 
of man? Dueling's pretty low down — but to kill — I 
couldn't do it." 

" Well," he scratched his ear ; " if it were me 

Why, you couldn't show up at Home — in your club, 
say — and admit having killed men that way ! One 
must draw the line somewhere:" 

So we came to the gentleman, and I asked him 
pointedly for his apology. He had an ax. For a 
long moment I watched his slow eye travel round from 
chamber to chamber of the empty cylinder of my gun, 
then glitter as his glance bored up towards mine along 
the sights, with perfect understanding. Then drop- 
ing the ax, he let me off with two black eyes end a 
bloody nose, a generous " satisfaction " which con- 
finned my distaste for the odious practice of dueling. 
The biggest thing I ever killed was a lame crow, and 
I would prefer a dozen thrashings to the after- 
thoughts of a murderer. 

[ 218] 



THE TRAIL OF THE TRADER 

When the spring came, the " Man on the Bridge " 
was having a rather bad time. What business re- 
mained was on credit, candy for breakfast, a cigar 
for luncheon, and of several customers only one paid 
up. She was a Sister of Sorrow, worn out, in rags, 
d}ang. Many a night, hungry for a kind word, she 
would come, braving the bitter cold upon the bridge 
to smoke a cigarette, and stand at my window sulky, 
half defiant, while we gossiped. The men chaffed her 
roughly, the " good " women passed by sniffing on the 
other side of the way, the black gales drenched her 
with sleet, the river grumbled on ice and bowlders 
below. 

For long she had kept her " man," her tough she 
called him, but now that she was dying, her purse 
failed his needs, he deserted her, moving to another 
town down the gulch. Word came to her of him — 
he was shot in a gun-fight, and then she sold her 
bed, her cabin, all that was left, to pay for his 
funeral. 

From my place on the bridge I looked out day after 
day, week after week, for her return ; at night, think- 
ing I heard her footstep, I would get up to peer 
through the windows ; but the winter broke, the trees 
[219] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

budded, the river rolled ice and bowlders with the 
spring floods, and she came back no more. Bowlders 
and ice — I wonder still at times — waters raging for 
the sea — had she found her rest with them down 
towards the sea — rest from her sorrow? 



[220] 



XIII 

THE TRAIL OF THE DIS- 
COURAGED 

THE summer came, and by coach, by train, or 
afoot I wandered for months through settle- 
ments of farmers in Idaho, Washington, 
and Oregon, the three realms of the Columbia valley. 
I lived by painting photographs, sometimes by lectur- 
ing, never much in demand, but keeping more or less 
alive. Sympathetic acquaintances would often tell 
me that they set aside the general theory of my being 
a lunatic, but would like to know why I did not settle 
down and get rich. 

" Settle down? " The words vaguely suggested to 
me pleasures of social intercourse, of thought, letters, 
the arts, of athletic exercise, of bathing. For such 
peculiarities they would have lodged me in the county 
asylum. "Get rich?" The political and business 
methods of the country were not alluring. I could 
not explain, it would be rude, and the sympathetic 
[221 ] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

acquaintance would walk away, thoughtfully tapping 
his forehead. 

So I went blundering on, hoping to keep alive 
through this semi-civilized and admired region until 
I could come once more to people who would regard 
me as human, outcasts like me, frontiersmen. 

We English were savages once, ten thousand years 
ago — don't you remember? We tracked the Mam- 
moth north to the skirts of the ice, trapped them where 
they fed in the swamps, followed them southward in 
the autumn, lighted our winter fire upon the tribal 
camp-ground, and when rival tribes got in our way 
there was slaying. The old spirit moves us to 
migrate, we burn still with untamable, inextinguish- 
able savagery, abhorring floor, walls, and roof — the 
entire house of civilized restraint. We ask, we ad- 
venturers, the earth for our bed, the stars for our 
clock, the morning chill for our reveille, the ends of 
the earth for our portion, and in the path of our 
world-grabbing savagery the shuttles of Fate are 
weaving the fabric of Empire. 

Of all the trails I must not leave out that of the 
Discouraged, but will make it quite short. 

Wandering southward in quest of the Wilderness, 
[222] 



TRAIL OF THE DISCOURAGED 

leaving a track of pawned baggage, I came at last to 
a town where, from bitter experience, the hotel men 
demanded cash in advance from strangers. Nobody 
wanted to be lectured, nobody cared for painted pho- 
tographs, there was no employment offered, and the 
streets were dangerously infested with tramps. Just 
beyond lay the Wilderness, if I could only win there. 

It was very hot, indeed the thermometers were de- 
moralized, recording hysterically anything up to 106° 
before they burst ; and for three days I was out hunt- 
ing for work, any kind of work. On the third day I 
had a bad fainting-fit, and in the afternoon, while 
talking business with a citizen, broke down and cried 
like a coward. I don't know why, but vaguely re- 
member resenting the length of his beard. I was past 
hunger, getting very weak. Ten years I had earned 
my bread, now at the age of twenty-five my hair had 
begun to turn gray, and I was tired. There are in- 
deed tides in the affairs of men, and this was the end 
of the ebb, the dead slack. Had there been no change 
I suppose I should have taken to drink. The Trail 
of the Discouraged passes into that gate, and those 
who enter there leave Hope behind. 

The citizen of the long beard lent me a quarter for 
[223] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

food. Then the tide stirred, which soon was to begin 
rising, and is now in full flood. 

That evening I called on a local editor, to whom I 
offered my services as special correspondent. He 
read steadily while I laid proposals before him, 
snapped out some words of disgust at the clients of 
his journal, and went on reading. In a monotonous 
voice I condoled with him for having such clients, with 
the subscribers who suffered such an editor. I left 
him still reading. Next day I sent the local banker 
to condole with him for having missed the chance of 
getting me. 

" Wilkins the Printer " ; so read the signboard over 
a shanty, and within I discovered the printer, the 
printer's devil, and the editor of a forlorn little weekly 
paper. It was such a very little paper that two hun- 
dred copies would make a proud edition ; and the 
subscribers were people who could have paid up in 
bear meat or potatoes much easier than with 
cash. 

" Please " would I sit down ? How strange it 

sounded, that sweet word of courtesy ! The tramp 

sat down with a gulp of astonishment. " Why, 

thanks ! " Then, turning to the Editor : " From 

[224] 



TRAIL OF THE DISCOURAGED 

New England, I think ? " " Boston," he answered, 
smiling. I had not met a gentleman for so long. 
" Do you take an interest in such things as mere sub- 
scribers? Yes? You must be eccentric journalists! 
I want you to send a man to visit them in the Wilder- 
ness, to put their names in the paper, and praise their 
lone fight with difficulties, to place their needs on 
record, their hopes, their ventures, to tell the public 
of chances for making money, of investments for capi- 
tal. I want to win you new subscribers, to move the 
reticent who have not paid arrears. Will you send 
me as your special correspondent? " 

Those rare men had the courage to engage a special 
correspondent for a paper with two hundred sub- 
scribers, and it is pleasant to remember editions of 
five thousand copies brought within the range of their 
enterprise. The rival paper gnashed its teeth over 
those issues. 

We bought a horse, an Old Gentleman, white with 
the ashes of extinct vices, tired of life, but still much 
annoyed by a sore back. We had a saddle made to 
suit this last infirmity of a noble ruin, and I carried 
a bag of salt to heal the sores. Then the Old Gentle- 
man slouched off with me into the Wilderness. We 
[ 225 ] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

climbed out of the heat into forest whose cool glades 
seemed like enchanted waters wholly made of perfume, 
whose coral-red trunks went up into wavy green, 
whose brown floor of pine-needles floated off into 
swaths of anemones, while the Old Gentleman and I 
played at being mermaids, the jeweled humming- 
birds our escort, and the air about us was thrilled with 
bird songs of tireless ecstasy. 

Down in the valleys the women were so rich that 
they lay on couches, their very skin like gold — yellow, 
and wan children gasped complaints in the sweltering 
verandas. Here on the hills the people were poor ; 
ruddy, winsome mothers, children bursting with 
health and mischief, men who could not let a stranger 
pass without boasting to him of glorious things 
in the future. And on beyond the settlements, 
by winding trails, we climbed to the alps above, 
the meadows between timber line and the snow, 
pastures of heaven starred with constellations of 
flowers. 

We scrambled along edges of the cliffs whose bases 

"were hid in cloud, over stern wastes of rock and drifted 

snow, even to those last high crags, glazed by the 

lightning, where mortal summits brave the immortal 

[226] 



a RAIL OF THE DISCOURAGED 

sky, and earthly brows are touched by the fingers of 
God. Holy and beautiful are those hills, and there 
was given me salt to harden my sores. 

The cowboys rode miles to show me the way, pros- 
pectors took offense unless I stayed over night, sheep- 
herders were slighted if a leg of mutton proved too 
much for my supper. The Old Gentleman took me 
from the white crests into purple-red, fiery-heated 
canyons, where down in the bases of the world the 
rattlesnakes la}' drowsily hoping for incautious flies. 
I was prospecting for mercury and for opals, and 
found men opening lead mines under the foundations 
of the lava. 

Among the high summits I came one day to a mine 
which had been manipulated by London financiers, for 
the robbing of widows and orphans. The closing of 
this good mine had ruined the reputation of the dis- 
trict, and the gentleman now in possession lived alone, 
a hermit among big ruins. He led me into the tun- 
nels, walking gingerly under timbering, rotten, bend- 
ing inwards, from whence white hands of fungus 
reached at us. To balance myself I had set my little 
finger against a beam, when, looking back, my guide 
cried in a tense whisper : 

[227] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

" For God's sake, don't ! " He was pale, sweat- 
shaken, because I had touched that beam, and not 
daring even to whisper any more, we went on climbing 
over debris where the roof had fallen, until we came 
to a winze leading down to the lower works. Before 
venturing farther we lowered a candle into this hole 
and the light went out. The breath of life would 
have gone out if we had entered there. And now 
we heard behind us a distant crash with long-resound- 
ing echoes. Had the whole tunnel collapsed? Were 
we prisoners ? We dared not run, but crept down the 
long gallery where white hands seemed to reach at 
our throats. At last we could see the entry, where 
there should have been daylight, only to find black 
darkness. Then the darkness was lighted by an in- 
stant blue glare, followed by a deafening peal of 
thunder. The night had fallen, a storm was raging 
since we had entered the mine, and we came reeling 
out of the tunnel, inwardly thanking Heaven that we 
were not entombed. At the entrance we were deaf- 
ened, blinded, stunned by the mountain storm which 
blasted a tree upon the slopes below us, and seemed to 
shake the ground on which we stood. Only while the 
lightning blazed could we see our way, halting be- 
[228] 



TRAIL OF THE DISCOURAGED 

tween the flashes, in utter darkness, until we gained 
the shelter of the house. 

It was at the foot of this mountain that I came 
next day to Granite, a town of three people, hotel- 
keeper, saloonkeeper, and storekeeper, the other 
twenty-six being absent cutting a new trail. I had 
been fed, and was inquiring for Greenhorn Mountain, 
when a young man rode up to the saloon armed with 
rifle, revolver, bowie-knife, and a black scowl. He 
was bound, he told me, towards Greenhorn Mountain, 
and would just buy a bottle of pickles and one of 
whisky before starting. With my last dollar I con- 
formed to etiquette by providing a bottle of whisky 
for myself, then, as we rode off, Scowl opened his 
quart of pickles, and used his bowie for a fork. When 
he had eaten the last pickle, he remarked that he was 
camp-tender to three flocks of sheep, and that his 
whisky was for number two herder. My whisky being 
disengaged, I drew the cork. He drank at length, 
but when my turn came my tongue stopped the neck 
of the bottle — my friend carried too much artillery. 
His second and third drinks were copious, mine a de- 
lusion. 

" Partner," said he, " you mistrust me." 
[229] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

" I'll show you how much," said I, taking a real 
drink. 

We were riding through bull-pine forest in the 
gloaming, and in all I had three mouthfuls of that 
wonderful liquor before it knocked me out of the 
saddle. When I recovered consciousness, I found 
myself on the flat of my back alone under the stars, 
wondering who I was, and where I came from, but 
presently feeling cougars close by me, got up and 
made a fire. So I lay listening to the great cats sing- 
ing, while the stars wheeled through their course, and 
in the break of dawn saw Mr. Scowl searching the 
woods for me. He came at my call, explaining that 
I had been dragged by one foot from the stirrup, 
and he too drunk to rescue me from almost certain 
death. Our horses were lost, but he would track them 
down, and I must wait for him in the sheep camp close 
at hand. 

All through the morning I sat in the sheep camp 
with the herder, and at noon Mr. Scowl came back 
afoot, reporting his tracking a failure. Convinced 
that he had robbed me, I sat sulking by the campfire 
through the afternoon, but at dusk Scowl rode into 
camp triumphantly drunk, leading my horse. After 
[230] 



TRAIL OF THE DISCOURAGED 

supper we hit the trail, leading seven mules, tied head 
and tail, on the way to number three sheep camp, and 
through many weary hours went stumbling onward 
through the pitch-black woods, over mire, roots, dead- 
fall, thorn, and underbrush, until at two in the morn- 
ing we came out upon clear ground. Scowl's scout- 
ing had been wonderful, his progress festive, and his 
joyousness was unabated at the sight of four small 
fires along the ridge ahead. 

" To keep off cougars," he explained in whispers. 
" My herder here's the biggest coward west of the 
Rockies, and I'm going to scare his soul out. You 
just hark!" 

He purred like a cat, his clear voice lifting slowly, 
easily? to the grand sustained battle-cry of a nine- 
foot cougar. A flash of light blazed out from be- 
tween the guard fires, a bullet came whizzing between 
us, and I coughed. 

" You're scared ! " said my friend derisively, and 
we rode on into the camp. We ate half a sheep be- 
tween us, then slept, and in the morning I went on, 
rather glad to be alone in the big woods, scouting for 
Greenhorn Mountain. 

I might tell many tales of wonderful gold-mines 
[ 231 ] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

and strange breeds of men, but pleasantest of all to 
remember were the several nights when, lost in the 
forest, I would light my fire of pine-cones, hobble the 
Old Gentleman, and listen for hours to the love-songs, 
the war-chants, the triumph-paeans of the cougars. 
Their eyes glowed green and flame when they crept 
near, smelling up wind to find out if I were injurious, 
then they would go away into the shadows and purr 
to say they were pleased. Of course, had I been a 
sheep, I might have felt prejudice, or were I a hunter, 
been excited by lithe nine-foot cats within such easy 
range ; but I only felt like a trespasser on their 
preserves. The cougars might have had the Old 
Gentleman, but seeing him too thin even to cast a 
shadow, were perhaps fastidious. So I would sleep 
until that evil-minded vagrant tried to desert, then, 
missing the clank of his hobbles, wake up and chase 
him home. He had his two-hours' nap just before 
dawn, and thought me a decided drawback when — 
clear canary light shining between black trees — I sad- 
dled him once more to lope off questing for a break- 
fast. 

The work was done, I was on the home-trail, riding 
slowly through the ripe wheat of the outermost set- 
[232 ] 



TRAIL OF THE DISCOURAGED 

ilement, and I thought the Old Gentleman must be 
dying. His back was quite healed, and with no griev- 
ance left to live for, he had resolved to pass awa} r 
into cats'-meat of doubtful quality, when a lad well 
mounted joined us out of the wheatfields. We swung 
abreast and made friends, the young horse promptly 
challenging the old to a scamper. The Old Gentle- 
man shyly resisted, longing to show off, afraid for his 
reputation as an invalid. Distant smoke had ap- 
peared, chimneys ahead, a wooden spire — he knew 
that place, had been there before! He snuffled, 
pointed his ears, winked at the young horse, damned 
his repute as an invalid, kicked up his heels, and broke 
for that village at full gallop. We rolled in with 
high tails through the dust, and reined hard in the 
village street just as a smart team of bays with a 
buggy drew up by the little hotel. Surely I knew 
that man in the buggy — the local banker from town? 

"Hello!" he cried, "well met! We've had no 
news of you for three weeks — thought the cougars 
had got you — going to send out a search party. So 
jou're safe, and homeward bound ! " 

" Bringing my sheaves with me." 

" Why, our town's just crazy about you. All sorts 
[233] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

of cablegrams for you from England, money in my 
bank for you from London — your luck's changed with 
a vengeance ! Com'n-'av-a-drink ! " 

Fifty-five ringing miles down through the forests, 
and out on the lava plains, brought the Old Fraud, 
frisky with renewed 3 r outh, back to the place where his 
withers had been torn raw, back home to town. With 
a yell I reined before the shanty, and out came Wil- 
kins the Printer, the human editor, and the printer's 
devil, to my immense relief all quite in good health, 
after what seemed like years and years since I left 
them. Yes, there were sheaves of subscriptions, reams 
of copy, and another month's work in the farming 
districts would make my campaign complete. Oh, 
but there were telegrams, letters, money in the bank, 
all sorts of things i 

Let me skip that last month and come to the point 
when the Printer, the Editor, and the Devil got rid 
of me for good. By the telegrams, the letters, and 
the money in the bank, it appeared that an old book 
published some years ago had been approved by a 
mighty critic in London, that two short stories had 
been accepted by some Olympian editor, and that I 
was called home to a country where writers are not 
[234] 



TRAIL OF THE DISCOURAGED 

always starved. A trade at last, the glory of crafts- 
manship, my life's ambition realized. I should tread 
no more the Trail of the Discouraged, take my dis- 
charge from the dusty ranks of the Lost Legion. 

A sorry-looking wayfarer, with ragged overalls, 
long boots, clanking, rusty spurs, a red cotton hand- 
kerchief loose round the neck, a lean, bronzed face 
half hid by a drooping sombrero, I rode for the last 
time through the town and said good-by to the Old 
Fraud at his home stable. Then I took off the spurs. 
So, in the devious manner of my tribe, taking in all 
possible scenery and discomforts upon the way, the 
Frontier all behind, the World ahead, I drifted grad- 
ually — Home. 



[235] 



XIV 
THE TRAIL OF THE CARGADOR 

BACK in London again, I tried to rest con- 
tented by the fireside, praying for trouble, 
miserable at being left out of the Klondike 
rush. Two chums shared chambers with me in Greah 

Ormond Street. H mourned for his old saddle 

on the Frontier, and pretended to read for the Bar. 

Mr. M had lately been captured with a shipload 

of arms, at war with the Chinese Empire, and, sorely 
grieved at having missed a throne, was writing novels. 
Other fellows used to drop in for hot whisky and a 
pipe, who yarned of ivory raids beyond the Congo, 
of golden beaches in Patagonia, trading with canni- 
bal blacks in North Australia, gun-running in Mo- 
rocco, warships bought for mysterious foreigners, or 
smuggling liquor up near Hudson's Bay. London is 
Headquarters for the Lost Legion. 

One night, as we plotted mischief by the fire, I 
broached plans for an Expedition, inventing as I went 
on, amid a storm of derision. To make the sequel 
[236] 



THE TRAIL OF THE CARGADOR 

clear I must give these plans. In a previous chapter 
I have mentioned that in the days before the success 
of Atlantic cables, an Overland Telegraph was pro- 
jected between New York and St. Petersburg. 
Twenty-two years after that enterprise was aban- 
doned a pack-train of mules left the Canadian Pacific 
Railway at Ashcroft, B. C, and followed the old 
Telegraph trail to the Skeena River. This was in 
1889, just after I left my Mission on the Skeena, and 
my pious Gaetkshians got up on their hind-legs for 
war against mules and drivers. They plundered that 
pack-train. 

Still, my old parishioners would not eat me; the 
trail, much overgrown, and cumbered with telegraph 
wire, had grass enough for a couple of pack-trains 
a year, and a Gaetkshian guide would show me the 
way to the Stickeen River. From Ashcroft to Tele- 
graph Creek on the Stickeen would be one thousand 
miles. 

Now it was only another seven hundred and fifty 
miles on from the Stickeen to the Klondike. The 
Canadian Government was pledged to start a service 
of steamers up the Stickeen from the sea, a railway 
thence to Teslin Lake, the main source of the Yukon, 
[237] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

and another service of steamers down the Yukon to 
Dawson City. This all-Canadian route to the Klon- 
dike meant a demand for horses. A pack-animal 
costing twenty dollars at Ashcroft would sell for two 
hundred dollars on the Stickeen, or, better still, could 
earn forty cents a pound on cargo carried thence to 
the Yukon. My plan then was to take a pack-train 
across the one-thousand-mile trail, have eighteen 
months' provisions waiting at the Stickeen, and there 
set up a base camp. Half the expedition could then 
earn wealth as packers, while the other half went ex- 
ploring the rivers for gold. It still looks nice on paper. 

I had five dollars by way of capital for this ven- 
ture, and though my chums wanted it for a dinner to 
celebrate the idea, the money went at once into 
business. 

" Experienced Western Traveler " advertised in 
the Times, offering to lead a Klondike Expedition. 
In Europe that announcement would have seemed 
like the freak of a maniac, in England there were 
sixty-three replies. To each applicant I explained 
that he had no earthly chance of getting rich, but 
would be overworked, drenched, possibly starved, as 
a laborer, navvy, and scullion, and for these interest- 
[238] 



THE TRAIL OF THE CARGADOR 

ing experiences must pay twelve hundred and fifty 
dollars, cash down in advance. Eight men accepted 
these conditions. " He was a most sarcastic man," 
said one of them afterwards, describing me in print; 
" very bright, although I firmly believe from his ac- 
tions that he was a half-lunatic." Quite so, for an 
eager nose was once more luring a weak chin into 
most grievous trouble. My beautiful plans made no 
provision for a margin of disaster. The spring was 
to come a month late — ruin before we could march; 
the same scheme had attracted three thousand men 
with seven thousand horses — the route eaten bare of 
all save poison weeds, and tramped into a thousand- 
mile mud-hole ; and the Canadian Government, foully 
breaking faith, was to abandon the Overland way, 
leaving us all to starve. 

I was suffering from swollen head, remembering 
my experience in twenty-eight trades, but forgetting 
that I had never learned one of them. So in the de- 
vout belief that I was fit for leadership, I guided bet- 
ter men than myself, paving their Hell with my good 
intentions while I led them blindfolded into the Ash- 
croft Horror. 

On the 25th of January, 1898, we organized the Ex- 
[239] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

pedition, meeting at my rooms in town, all strangers, 
polite, stiff, and suspicious, after the English way. 
We were very formal indeed — had not found each 
other out ; but there were solicitors with top-hats, also 
whisky, soda, and cigarettes, so that everything was 

legal and proper. At these rites I presented H , 

my second in command, as horse-wrangler. 

A fortnight later he and I, happy as schoolboys 
at being in the saddle once more, rode out from the 
little town of Ashcroft in British Columbia. Very 
far away was that London life — two cowboys on a 
winter trail in the bush ; but the Englishman is the 
only animal alive who with a shift of clothes can 
change from the entirely civilized to the wholly sav- 
age without any sense of strangeness. Our way led 
north up a thirty-mile hill, and then seventy miles 
through the deep snows of the Northern Forest. The 
cold was piercing, with most shrewd storms, but along 
that coach-road to the Cariboo Mines there are rest- 
houses at intervals, big log-buildings, where it is the 
custom to offer a drink, and the warmest corner by 
the stove, to every traveler. There we were among 
frontiersmen who talked horse, and we were in touch 
with market prices. 

[240] 



THE TRAIL OF THE CARGADOR 
The Klondike rush had nearly stripped the Plains* 
but horse-dealers far off in the forest were glad to 
sell. Fine stock they offered, fifteen hands in height, 
ten hundred-weight or more, wild bronchos from 
blooded sires at twenty dollars a head. Unhappily 
these forest-bred horses proved soft; and desert stock 
would have served us better in the terrible time that 
was coming. When we had hired a pair of horse- 
breakers we drove our herd down to Hat Creek > 
thirteen miles above Ashcroft, and there set up our 
first camp. Renting a pasture and corral, we set to 
work horse-smashing, and that was a big job, lasting 
a month. Mature and entirely wild horses will 
" pitch " until they are half dead, throw themselves 
over cliffs, and fight with desperation before they 
are conquered ; indeed with one mare my chum failed, 
for after throwing herself four times on the level and 
thrice over the cut bank of a river, she cricked her 
neck and died of a broken heart. 

In time the last horses were ridden, packed, 
branded, shod, and accustomed to human society, 
while I was busy with the commissariat, the cooking, 
and the beastly accounts, much traveling, and sore 
misgivings, for we were living under canvas, the 
[241] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

temperature still ten degrees below zero every night, 
and daily our wonder and horror grew at a thing 
Leyond experience. The winter should have ended 
long ago, flowers should have blossomed beside the 
melting drifts, the buds should have been fat on every 
twig, but still the land lay ice-bound. When we took 
down saddle-horses to meet our crowd from England, 
it was within three days of the date fixed for march- 
ing; but there was ice in the creeks, snow on the 
hills, frost tingling in the air. And the horses were 
failing. Sick with apprehension, we watched them 
starve on hay at twenty-five dollars a ton — lapsing 
into scarecrows for lack of the sweet young grass. 
Breaking is bad for a horse, but breaking on dry 
feed is terrible, and one day my pet black saddle- 
beast fell mortal sick from under me — Pestilence in 
the herd ! I had been busy breaking the crowd to 
camp work, but when the Strangles appeared, we 
struck our camp, grass or no grass, and fled. We 
struck out across the heights of the forest, leaving 
a dead horse at nearly every camp, afraid to march, 
afraid to stay, spending the last of our reserve fund 
on rotten hay at forty-five dollars a ton. 

On the sixteenth day, far in the forest, we dropped 
[242 ] 



THE TRAIL OF THE CARGADOR 
down a little by-trail into paradise — a bench in the 
tremendous abyss of the Fraser River. Cliffs thou- 
sands of feet aloft shut out the world, and the tor- 
rent roared below. The grass was already a foot 
high, all starred with big marigolds, a crystal spring 
bubbled beside our tents, and no footstep of man for 
months had disturbed the deer. A stallion ranging 
about with his harem captured all our mares ; the 
geldings, apart by themselves, played hide-and-seek 
with our reliefs of herders; and all our sorrowful 
herd, convalescent, hourly gaining in strength, 
whisked their long tails, snorted at the very sight of 
man, and lapsed to wild beasts in a week. 

Leaving our camp of rest, we attempted to drive 
the herd across Fraser River, but, several breaking 
away over the mountains, were obliged to detach a 
search party. Then we towed the animals across, 
making them swim behind a scow, and one marc 
drowned herself out of spite. Beyond that the coun- 
try was mountainous along the western bank, with 
nice crags to fall off, plenty of grass, and not too 
much of a trail. With an ideal pack-train of tame 
mules, who follow a bell mare with devoted attach- 
ment, it needs no labor of a morning to find and 
[243] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

bring in the herd. Each mule walks up to her own 
private harness and load, then stands at attention 
like an old soldier, preparing groans of protest 
against the time of her toilette. But ours was not an 
ideal pack-train. 

The " rigging " is most complex, its proper han- 
dling a profession. First comes the sweat-pad, which 
is an empt}' sack to collect the molted hair and 
juices of exercise. Over that is laid a large double 
blanket, folded curiously to relieve any bruises on the 
skin. These blankets form the cargador's bedding 
at night. Third comes the corona, a strip of carpet 
to prevent the harness from sliding. Fourth comes 
the apparejo, which is a pair of leather cushions 
ribbed with sticks, stuffed with swamp grass, and 
specially fitted to the animal — who is most particular 
on the subject. To this apparejo is attached a crup- 
per passed round the rump, partly to steady the pack 
downhill, mainly to aggravate the animal and chasten 
unseemly pride. Fifth comes the sovran helmo, a bit 
of canvas stiffened at the sides, which keeps the cargo 
from sliding. Sixth is the cargo itself, a package 
for either flank, each lashed up with a luff -tackle 
purchase, and the two loosely hung with a short sling 
[244] 



THE TRAIL OF THE CARGADOR 

rope so as to balance perfectly. On top is piled the 
odd gear, and over all is spread the manta, a canvas 
rainproof cover, which makes the cargador's tent 
when it can be spared from sheltering the equipage. 
Last comes the lash-rope, making the load fast to 
the animal with a subtle purchase called the diamond 
hitch. One deft twitch and a wrench will displace 
that lashing, but a fractious animal may buck him- 
self sick before it begins to come loose. When the 
pack-train is ready to march the cook rides ahead, 
leading the bell mare, who carries the kitchen in a 
pair of chests. The captain of the outfit scouts ahead 
searching for pasturage and camp grounds, or, when 
at liberty, helps the cargadors and arrieros. These, 
the crew, ride in pairs with the procession, read}' to 
relash loose packs, and, when the animals tire, to 
keep them from straying. This is not only endless 
and most exhausting work, but in the forest one needs 
both nerve and " shaps " (leg armor) to gallop head- 
long into jungle after the self-effacing " Squattles," 
the eruptive " Sarah," or that malingerer " Jones." 
The custom is to march at cocklight and camp at 
noon, giving the horse-wrangler a chance to fatten 
and rest his herd; but with a broncho outfit such as 
[245] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

ours, many beautiful traditions are most rudely 
breached. We had to build a ring fence at each 
camp wherein to trap and catch the horses, provided 
they were not all lost overnight in jungle impene- 
trable to man. 

Our convalescents bucked, bit, struck, kicked, 
balked, bolted, mired, drowned, broke their silly necks,, 
kicked their packs into pieces, and never failed to be- 
have with surprising aplomb. As to the outfits of 
tame mules which we so envied, the wet forest wiped 
them out in a month. Not one mule survived the first 
five hundred miles. 

At Quesnelle, the jumping-off place at the edge of 
the Frontier, we swung into the Telegraph trail, a 
string of mud-holes walled with bush, crowded with 
thousands of people all pressing northward in grim 
silence. What with the starvation of their animals,, 
sere backs, stray horses, squabbles, bankruptcy, and 
endless rain, most of the pack-trains were just on the 
verge of collapse. We were near the end of our own 
resources, and had barely funds enough to reprovi- 
sion. I knew already that by the delay of the spring 
we were a month too late for effective work in the 
north, that this overcrowded trail would become the 
[246] 



THE TRAIL OF THE CARGADOR 

scene of a ghastly tragedy, and that the Canadian 
Government had blandly left us to our fate. Per- 
haps it. was criminal to keep these pleasant secrets 
for my own private consumption. I knew we were 
ruined; but, run away? I would rather have shot 
myself. 

And indeed only cowardice could have prompted 
our flight. On that tragic march the horses of our 
Star Brand won us the respect of all frontiersmen. 
There was no expedition so sumptuously furnished, 
so well provisioned, or with such an effective base 
camp as we had waiting us in the north. 

Only a tenderfoot crowd, we already rivaled the old- 
hand cargadors in our loading, tracking, and camp 
work ; and the wonderful English sense of discipline 
kept us free from the squabbles which marred man}' 
rival companies. I had just reason for pride in the 
Star Outfit, well capable of fighting through to the 
Stickeen. We had thirty-five horses left, and to say 
the least were no worse off than the most fortunate of 
our neighbors. The only thing wrong with the Star 
Outfit was my unfortunate leadership ; I had splashed 
too recklessly with the funds, I had — rather the other 
fellows confessed the remainder of my sins. Only 
[247] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

three of them hated me with any degree of despera- 
tion. 

I was being tested. One day I rode at the head 
of the train leading the bell mare, and our way 
swept down a hill into the Blackwater valley. The 
river, sunk below the meadows in a little ean} T on, 
roared between sheer walls with deafening thunder, 
and across the gap some logs had been thrown, form- 
ing a bridge. My fool mare, objecting to the place, 
jumped under stress of hard spurring half-way 
across, then lost her head altogether, and backed off 
the edge of the bridge. She was such a fool that she 
actually missed the river and tumbled into a criss-cross 
of timbering which formed the rough abutment. I 
rolled out of the saddle, kicked her to show I was pres- 
ent, and hoisted her out. Incidentally I got a shrewd 
tick on my shin. But with this delay my partners 
were now bunched, waiting to cross the bridge, while 
our horses, terrified by the uproar of the waters and 
the shaking ground, were certain to stampede if we 
tried to halt. I must mount, and ride that fool across 
the bridge, or lose all claim to be a leader of men, but 
my legs trembled so that I could hardly stand, and a 
sudden nausea seized my inside. I led the two mares 
[248] 



THE TRAIL OF THE CARGADOR 
across, knowing at last that I was unfit for command. 
This is the curse of the romantic temperament, that it 
goes to utter smash when put to the test. 

Thence was to come much sorrow, and now I must 
speak of memories which still hurt, regarding an un- 
fortunate gentleman whom Nature had not designed 
for any expedition by land. 

A. C came of a naval family who must have 

hated horses from time immemorial. Of most en- 
gaging humor, chivalrous, and unselfish, C was 

a born sportsman, an enthusiast at mining, yet seemed 
only at home on the water. Therefore I was apt to 
be rude when our success, our very lives, depended 
upon learning horsemanship and woodcraft. But 
still he was patient with me, his dignity too fine and 
deep a thing to ruffle easily upon the surface, and I 
never guessed how sore he was at heart. 

We marched through woods so dense that when we 
turned our herd loose to feed, we could only pray to 
our gods that by luck we should see them again. 
They had to stray far after grass. So to travel 
twenty miles we must work twenty hours a day, for- 
tunate if we got the horses together by nine o'clock, 
caught and loaded by noon, released again to graze 
[ M9 ] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

before dusk. Our best saddle-horses were ridden to a 
finish, one had been ridden to death. All day we were 
tortured by black flies, all night by mosquitoes; in- 
deed the poison from them had inflamed the glands of 
our necks, and engendered much evil in our tempers. 
The Overland route was indeed a school for men, but 
I thought the indignant gods were twisting our tails 
in the hope of educing a squeal. 

After fording Mud River, we were compelled — ten 
horses astray in the willows — to lie in camp for a day. 
Apart from the horse-hunting we had harness to re- 
pair, and I did all the cooking. Indeed, bar twenty 
minutes for a bath, I had been at work since three in 
the morning, and night fell at nine o'clock while still 

there was much to do. C— had been thinking all 

day, and when he offered to help me wash up after 
supper, I told him roughly to " go away and rest." 

The words cut worse than a whip-lash across his 
face, words that could never be withdrawn, never for- 
given. C was my partner, not my servant; and 

if I could not command myself, how should I lead? 
So I was weighed in the balance, was found wanting. 

Next morning, it was the ninth day of June, I 
was very early at work, served breakfast, and got the 
[250] 



THE TRAIL OF THE CARGADOR 

boys away to hunt the swamps for our horses. C 

would not eat in my company, but after breakfast 
I noticed him preparing his saddle and gear for the 
day's march. Then he lit his pipe, and as he walked 
past the fire I begged him to have some breakfast. 
Without noticing my presence he went on, and passed 
between two willow bushes out of sight. 

Half an hour must have passed before the missing 
horses were driven into camp, and the recall signal 
fired, of three revolver-shots. All the rest of the 
morning we were busy catching, harnessing, and load- 
ing the pack animals, breaking camp, saddling; and 
it was only at noon, when I rode out as usual to scout 
ahead, that I began to be anxious about C 's ab- 
sence. Meeting a horseman who had come down the 

trail without seeing anything of C , I rode back 

to place food and a letter by the campfire. I had 
intended a drive that day of sixteen miles, but camped 
the outfit at the tenth mile by Bobtail Lake, con- 
vinced that the man who had strayed would over- 
take us. 

In the morning I sent back a man to fire shots up 

Mud River valley ; at noon, hearing that C was 

not in the trail, I countermanded the marching orders 
[251] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

and sent back our two best horsemen to search; at 
3 p. m. I sent back the doctor with a pack animal 
loaded with camp equipment and medical stores, to 
cook for the searchers ; at dusk, with one other man, 
rode out into the deepening night very uneasy. We 
lay out at Lost Horse Meadows, five miles back, where 
on the morning of the 11th of June I organized a 
big search party from the pack-trains there in camp. 
By sunrise I was at Mud River, raising a second 
search party from various pack outfits. By evening 
I had my own Star Outfit searching, with only two 
herders left to take care of our horses, in the country 
round Bobtail Lake. 

After that I stopped every outfit on the trail ; daily 
the woodlands rang with the cries and the gun-shots 
of the searchers : on the hills we lit great fires ; expert 
trackers were out in search of signs ; but those who 
went out noisily would come back silent, and in camp 
men would wake at night screaming, " I'm lost ! I'm 
lost ! " 

On the third day the rain began, obliterating the 
tracks. We could hardly bring ourselves to eat — he 
had no food ; or to sleep — he had no fire. Every com- 
fort of the camp arraigned us, charged us with lazi- 
[252] 



THE TRAIL OF THE CARGADOR 

ness in the search; if anyone ventured to laugh, he 
was stared out of countenance, while the kindly in- 
quiries of newcomers gave us vague offense. For now 
if we dared a hope it was that delirium had come soon 
to the lost man, for his merciful deliverance from 
pain. Like a little child he would make the woods 
his kingdom, some fallen tree his throne, all the won- 
ders revealed to him that reason hides from us. He 
would never know pain again, or sorrow, or want, but 
the peace of God — then sleep. 

On the fifth day, learning that there were Indians 
some fifty miles to the northward, I sent one of our 
herders from the advanced camp. The horsemanship 
of English hunting stood him in good stead now, for 
he rode all night through darkness, over unknown 
ground, crossing deep mire, stony hills, and dangerous 
rivers. So, moved by his persuasion, at evening of 
the sixth day, five Indians came into camp afoot, hav- 
ing left their horses played out along the trail. On 
the seventh morning they started into the woods, and 
I suspended all other searching lest they should be 
embarrassed by fresh tracks. Late in the evening 

they returned hopeful, having found C 's trail 

and followed it to where, upon his first night, he had 
[253] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

rested against a tree. On the eighth morning, full 
of hope, I sent two white men with them to verify 
their work, and all day we waited in camp, restless, 
sick with anxiety. Darkness had fallen before the 
Indians came back from the last search of all. 
Traveling painfully over dead-fall timber, guided 
here by a rotten log crushed in, there by a bent twig, 
they had come to the crossing of a little stream some 
fifteen miles from camp. Beyond that there was not 
a trace for miles — not a sign. 

Henceforth no offer of reward could induce the 
Indians to continue the hopeless search, and white 
men cannot track. Still, with bloodhounds, we might 
have been in time, but there were none within five 
hundred miles. 

So on the tenth day, we who were left gathered 
about our campfire for the last time, and it remained 
for me to suggest plans for the future. Our food had 
all been spent in the search, which meant short ra- 
tions until some of us could bring a load of provi- 
sions from Quesnelle. Two parties would then be 
formed for the march northward, each financing itself, 

and this could be done by the division of C 's 

share in the company, and my own. My leadership 
[ 254 J 



THE TRAIL OF THE CARGADOil 
must be resigned, and my presence would be needed 

in England, where I must get probate for C 's 

widow. The company gave me a paper holding me 
free from blame. 

All of them, though nearly starved to death, 
reached the Stickeen in safety, with sixteen horses out 
of the fifty-one which we had bought, and in this 
fared better than most men on that disastrous trail. 

On the Edmonton trail to the Klondike very few 
got through alive, and whole companies of men are 
known to have perished. On the Ashcroft trail, the 
best thing to be said is that certainly no bodies were 
found. The facts will never be known. 

It is still rather a puzzle to me how I got home to 
England. At Ashcroft I had nothing left but a horse 
blanket and a bad dose of neuralgia. Afterwards I 
fell ill. But these things are better left unwritten, 
for, if one sins in company, one must always take the 
punishment alone, humbly and revering its justice. 

Slowly the news leaked out that I had murdered 

C , and, because his name was one held in great 

honor, the Press was eager to do justice to such news 

as came out from the forest. I have by me sharp 

personal criticism from a learned journal at Ran- 

[255] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

goon, comment wherein the Times of Singapore, and 
the Times of London, are agreed with the Melbourne 
Age and a paper in Mexico. For months there were 
lurid details of search expeditions, of Indians hold- 
ing the body to ransom, of a skeleton identified by a 
ring with armorial bearings, then came rumors of the 
man himself being seen alive in England. I have no 
facts or theories. 



[256] 



XV 

THE LONG TRAIL 

A FTER that disaster on the Ashcroft trail I 
/^L went back to my trade of writing books, 
J ^L worked for a year, sold a lot of rotten ideas 
for a lot of rotten money, and it was not good enough. 
Not for our opinions, intentions, or ideas shall we be 
judged at the last, not for our scribbles on foolscap, 
but for the things we have done. Fancy having to 
face the Day of Judgment with no credentials except 
literary i4 appreciations " by eminent revilers of 
books ! 

I had been something better than a windbag, must 
have fought pretty hard to get so thoroughly 
thrashed, and might yet be a man instead of sinking 
to a beastly imitation in trousers and a pot-hat. At 
the end of a year, ready to fight it out with Death, 
to fight to the finish, I rode out from the gates of 
Fort Macleod to make a record in horsemanship — or 
get killed. 

What were the existing records? Sotnik Dmitri 
[257] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

Peshkof rode a Cossack pony, named Seri, a running- 
walker, from Vladivostock to St. Petersburg, 5500 
miles, in 193 days at 28 miles a day. This is a 
world record for travel on a road with aid of signposts 
and hotels, and as a feat of horsemanship unrivaled. 
Kit Carson rode from the Mississippi to California, 
twenty-two hundred miles through wild country 
among hostile tribes. Neither of these records could 
be broken ; there is hardly room for such a road dis- 
tance in the one case or for such hazard in the other, 
but a third standard might be set — perhaps, of horse- 
manship and scouting in difficult ground. 

In 1888 I had attempted to ride from Western 
Canada to the City of Mexico, and was smashed up 
at the end of the sixteenth mile, as aforesaid. Now 
the trails of the American pioneers had all run from 
east to west. These trails are now permanent ways, 
the seven transcontinental railways, and upon these 
threads hang beads of settlement. But between the 
threads what is there? The Great American Desert 
extends from the Rocky Mountains to California, in 
extreme breadth about fifteen hundred miles between 
Texas and the Pacific. Defining " Desert " as coun- 
try too dry for farming, where all bushes are spiked,, 
[258] 



THE LONG TRAIL 

thorned, or aromatic, the Great American Desert 
touches the Canadian Pacific in the Thompson val- 
ley, and extends southward far into the heart of Mex- 
ico, rather more than three thousand miles. No man 
had ever ridden the length of that Desert, such a ride 
across dry country had not been recorded, and the 
achievement would take rank in the annals of horse- 
manship. It was not to be done for a bet, or for ad- 
vertisement — I wanted to get back my self-respect. 

" Boll your tail, and roll it high, 
We'll all be angels by and by." 

" Hit the trail," says the song of the cowboys, 
" home with the spurs, and roll your tail and ride ! 
for since we'll all be angels, black or white in time, 
let's make the best of a hard proposition and enjoy 
the earth while it lasts." 

In fear of getting lost, I took the Rocky Mountains 
for a guide. There they were in snow and sunlight 
against the westward sky, and southwards the Plains 
once more reaching away for ever and ever, Amen. 
I wanted to sing hymns, but my voice is like a wolf's 
howl, and it is the intention God hears, not the dis- 
tressful sounds. Besides I had to behave myself, rid- 
[259] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

ing with a Mounted Police Patrol — with subtle 
Aramis. 

The boys had been feeding me at the dear old D 
Troop mess, giving me saddle wallets, advice about 
greasy heels, also silk handkerchiefs, and a hearty 
God-speed for the long trail. Farther south I camped 
with Sergeant Athos, dined with Porthos, who is a 
sergeant-major now in South Africa, and found 
d'Artagnan, turned cowboy, but presently to take the 
war-trail against the Boers. The patrols passed me 
on through the Blood Indian country and the Mor- 
mon settlements, down to the United States boundary. 
There is a heap of stones all scratched and painted 
with the names of travelers, and it stands upon a 
ridge parting the waters of Hudson's Bay from the 
waters of the Mexican Gulf. The patrol could come 
no farther with me, and when I reached the foot of 
the hill I looked back, homesick. And there against 
the sky the trooper sat, his horse motionless, the sun 
in glory upon his harness, glowing in the warm colors 
of his cowboy dress — Good-by ! 

The Plains were all tawny gold, of wind-swept 
grass and shadows coldly blue, life in the light, death 
in the shade, lonely as man's career, reaching away 
[260] 



THE LONG TRAIL 

ahead. In a tremor of fear I went slowly, and then 
setting my teeth, spurred on, so long as there was 
light to see the trail — the long trail. 

Forty miles southward in Montana, I came next 
day to an Agency in the Blackfoot nation, and found 
it was Independence Day, the Fourth of July. Just 
beyond the buildings my horse, Tom, swung into step 
with a holiday crowd of cowboys, each man riding 
his very best pony. The pets talked horse-fashion 
among themselves, but the riders were silent, all save 
the yapper, who, being slack of jaw, would fling out 
three or four terse words to the mile. Cowboj^s rarely 
speak on the trail unless they have something to say. 
They see by the signs weather three days ahead, 
know by tracks who has passed for the last week, 
notice by brands whose horses or cattle are around 
them — but the man who mentions these facts assumes 
his comrades blind. 

We rolled into a camp of fourteen hundred Indians, 
a mile-wide ring of cone-shaped, smoke-browned 
tents, their canvas painted with mystical figures, and 
each lodge attended by a little tripod of sticks bear- 
ing a plumed drum or other sacred emblem. Far off 
we could hear soft-footed drums measuring a dance, 
[261] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

and one other big drum having a good time all by 
itself. That lone drum lived in the Medicine Lodge, 
a big round house of boughs where the young war- 
riors were being proved by ordeal of torture, prayers 
were made to the Great Spirit, »and the pipe went 
round among the chiefs and sorcerers. 

Towards the little drums we thundered at a gallop, 
and drew up all smoking beside an inclosure of 
wagons. There the squaws were celebrating the Grass 
Dance, dressed in bright robes, adorned with little 
mirrors, dyed grass, quills, small feathers, brass 
cartridge shells, and penny paper fans. They stood 
in a crescent, shoulder to shoulder, shuffling with bent 
knees sideways, all to the melancholy rumble of the 
drums, chanting a wild song which was too old to 
mean anything at all, but stirred up vague emotions, 
half-memories. 

Warriors were squatting round the circle in their 
robes of embroidered and painted skins, broad belts 
studded with brass carpet-tacks, eagle plumes, bear- 
claw necklaces. Their faces were gorgeously painted. 
A gentleman who sports a horse's tail in position, 
whose complexion is in violent stripes of red and yel- 
low, whose ornaments were looted from dust-bins, 
[262] 



THE LONG TRAIL 

would look incongruous, say, in the House of Com- 
mons. With antic leaps and melancholy howls two 
score of gentlemen danced each for himself without 
any attention to the rest, and all the time one felt 
that they were warriors, hunters, horsemen, for 
nothing could quite rob them of their dignity. A nice 
little boy, aged six, much dressed and painted, was at 
the front of every dance in a state of prodigious 
bliss. This small pagan was the best boy in the 
Agency Sunday School. Near by there were sham 
fights on foot and horseback, each telling in action 
the tale of some old-time war. The audience rode to 
and fro, half-breeds in the buckskin dress of times 
gone by, cowboys ogling the pretty young squaws, 
hunters, trappers, scouts, freighters, all sorts of 
frontiersmen, smoking cigarettes, and swapping lies 
while we watched the Indian games. Afterwards 
came the race meeting on a track beside the camp, 
and the grand stand was a grassy bank, where we 
rolled at our ease, made bets, and watched the win- 
ners home. A cloud of dust would gather in the dis- 
tance, come thundering down the course, then break 
with a flash of bright colors into the foreground, the 
ponies with smoking nostrils, gleaming eyes, and 
[263] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

hoofs tearing the ground. The judges never knew 
which won, until the grand stand explained, in mass, 
with strong language. Everybody was perfectly 
happy, and it was much more fun than the Derby. 

At last the sun went down behind the Rocky Moun- 
tains, and in the cool of evening we rode to the 
Agency buildings. There was a half-breed dance, a 
display of fireworks, and for me a corner in the hay- 
loft, where I got some sleep towards morning. 

After that for many days I rode under the shadow 
of the Rockies, where both land and air were defiled 
by sheep, a kind of vermin which no horseman likes. 
Neither would I speak with the herders, a prejudice 
which put me to shame when afterwards I heard of 
the great autumn storms. For when the snow-storms 
came they stayed with their flocks, guarding them, 
saving them — and their bodies were found beside the 
sheep pens. 

Sometimes on the lonely Plains I would meet the 
wild range horses ; a stallion guarding his harem of 
smug mares would come sailing down, mane and tail 
in the air, ears back, teeth bared, wanting to fight 
me, neighing his lordly challenge. My horse would 
be quaking with fright before the beast wheeled at 
[264] 



THE LONG TRAIL 

ten paces from me, cast the dust of his heels in my 
face, and drove his harem of mares away from tempta- 
tion. 

I found settlements strung out all across Montana, 
and had only to camp three nights on a road of four 
hundred miles. Overbearingly exalted are the folks 
of mine and mill, farm and growing town, where much 
is promised, little yet fulfilled. So is a half-broiled 
fish suggestive to the eager appetite, though not so 
far alluring to the teeth. " What d'ye think of my 
fish? " says Montana, spitting truculent on unwashen 
floors. " Strongest on earth, eh? Yes, Siree ! makes 
you played-out Easterners wilt ! " One shrinks past, 
holding one's nose. 

The grace of humility lurks only in towns gone 
smash, where some few survivors, nailed by the ears 
to a mortgage, take vengeance for their woes on the 
unusual traveler. One such place was Three Forks, 
placed at the meeting of three streams, which unite 
to form the Missouri, longest river on earth. It was 
quite a large town, with shops and churches, hotels, 
and dust enough for two thousand people, but there 
were only three families remaining — the rest having 
been driven away, I think, by mosquitoes. There are 
[265] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

many such eddies in that torrent of marching civiliza- 
tion known as the West. 

A day's march through farms, a night-ride over 
mountains, and, beyond that, a long stretch of baking 
desert brought me to the Yellowstone Park. It is 
fifty miles long, fifty wide, its valleys at twice the 
altitude of Snowdon, its mountains a mile above that, 
in the eternal ice. It is a forest full of horseflies and 
mosquitoes, where big white roads go coiling through 
the green. Choked with dust one drinks at a wayside 
spring, and laps up sparkling Apollinaris; wonder- 
ing at the monotony of the timber, one comes to a 
precipice of black bottle-glass in huge columnar crys- 
tals; and beyond that the road winds for miles by a 
cool brook threading between pools of boiling water. 
No beryls, no sapphires are quite so lovely as those 
deep, clear wells set in a fairy lacework of white carv- 
ing, and shot with strange rays of iridescent light. 
Then there are terraces of snowy sculptured stairs 
leading up into the blue of heaven ; acres of smoking 
white rock where jets from hell are blowing off like 
the thunderous exhaust of an ocean liner; and at in- 
tervals mounds of plaster from whence enormous col- 
umns arise of diamond water, half veiled in pearly 
[266] 



THE LONG TRAIL 

steam. Pots of boiling paint, cataracts of hot water, 
tracts where the standing forest is changed to jasper 
and onyx ; then, after a week of wonders and marvels, 
when every faculty of the mind is benumbed with over- 
astonishment, one comes at last to the Grand Canyon 
of the Yellowstone. My main impression was that I 
must have gone crazy. A big river comes out of a big 
lake, and leaps headlong into an abyss twelve hundred 
feet deep. The sides of this chasm are prickly with 
rock spires and pinnacles, crimson and rose, olive and 
orange, golden-brown and salmon, snow, ruby, and 
topaz, color gone mad, heaven turned loose, from the 
steel-blue torrent up to the somber forest and the 
arch of the cloud-flecked sky. Even the godless tour- 
ist is struck speechless. 

The forest reeks with them, camped in the glades, 
drawling between meals in the hotels, dragged through 
the blinding dust in wagonettes. The Liars who 
drive them are tame farmers, loaded each to the muzzle 
with Wild West fiction for their "dudes." The 
" dudes," poor things, believe everything, photo- 
graph everything, choke, and scratch their mosquito 
bites, guggle at the dust, and pay a deal more than 
they ever expected. Also there are many families, 
[267] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

called " sagebrush tourists," emigrants such as are 
forever moving by wagon through the West in search 
of the promised land. These turn aside for a rest in 
the Park, and are camped in its glades by hundreds. 

Nobody may use a gun, there are patrols of United 
States Cavalry to see to it, and the forest swarms 
with game. The bears, grizzlies, black, brown, cin- 
namon, lumbering beasts as big as an ox, ravage the 
ash-heaps at the camps and hotels, and are photo- 
graphed in the act by schoolma'ams in dusters and 
eyeglasses. 

The hotels have barricaded their larders, but the 
bears like to scratch themselves on the nicely spiked 
doers before they break in for refreshments ; or, fail- 
ing that, they search among the rooms and corridors 
hoping for a nice fat child. One self-indulgent bear 
sacked my camp, and left me with nothing but 
coffee and tobacco among the ruins of the commis- 
sariat. 

The troopers of the 7th Cavalry saved me from 
subsequent hunger, behaving most brotherly. And 
their accomplishments were truly surprising. Bash- 
ful young men admitted at my campfire they could 
shoot an ace of spades at a hundred yards, lasso a 
[268] 



THE LONG TRAIL 

buffalo bull, ride anything with hair on it, and pres- 
ently intended to arrest " Mac," the President of the 
Republic, for infracting the rules of the Park. All 
this they had acquired in six weeks of military service, 
and surely veterans of three months' standing must 
be horribly dangerous. 

But for the cavalry protection, wicked tourists 
would molest the helpless geysers, inciting them with 
an emetic of soap to untimely spouting. But these 
formidable guardians of the Law make the trembling 
citizen to keep off the grass, and throw him into a 
dungeon if he adorns the scenery with his honorable 
name and address. No trifle is too small for the atten- 
tion of the Army, but within fifty miles I came into 
a community of outlaws who live by robbing trains, 
banks, coaches, and trading-posts, by stealing bunches 
of cattle, and shooting sheriffs — they had shot one six 
weeks ago. The tourist is kept off the grass ; but the 
robber slaughters herds of elk just for the sake of 
their eye-teeth, which are desired as watch-charms by 
the brethren of the "Elk" Secret Society. This 
minute attention to signboards and official observ- 
ances, coupled with splendid indifference to mere rob- 
bery and murder, should teach our effete monarchy 
[269] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

how we might be advantaged from a groveling imita- 
tion of Republican Freedom. 

The outlaw stronghold is in Jackson's Hole, where 
there is a lake dominated by the sublime walls and 
icy spires of the Grand Teton. Under the shadow 
of that stupendous mountain, I found two or three 
times in a day's march some log-cabin among the trees 
by a water spring. Antlers branched from the gable ; 
and within were heads and pelts nailed to the timbers 
of the wall, traps, guns, snowshoes, horsegear, all the 
equipments of a hunter. There were no women, and 
the men wore their harness of belt and boot, spur and 
gun, with a certain unconscious grace one only sees 
on the remote Frontier. They were for the most part 
hunters and trappers, but a few of the quiter men 
lived by robbery under arms. Their trail belongs to 
the next chapter. 

My way led eastward, up from the sagebrush 
valley through gorges walled with cliffs of bright 
orange, olive, and terra-cotta rock ; then higher 
through meadows and timber to the upper pastures 
of the Gros Ventre Mountains, where the snow lay 
deeply drifted in July; and after that down to the 
sagebrush valley of Green River, where I camped, 
[270] 



THE LONG TRAIL 

weather-bound, at the Dog Ranch. All that country- 
was thick with cast antlers, tracks and sign of elk, 
moose, and blacktail, deer, sheep; wolves, foxes,, 
wolverine, lynx; first-class bears — grizzly; second- 
class bears — cinnamon, black, brown (no third class) ; 
beaver, musquash, marten, polecat ; and there are fifty 
wild bison. Moreover there are eagles in that land,, 
hawks, owls, geese, duck, pelicans, cranes, heron,, 
grouse, pintails, sage hens. It is, perhaps, the best 
hunting ground left in North America. The weather 
was past all excuse detestable, and it was more than 
wealth to sit by the hearth at the Dog Ranch while 
the hunters swapped lies, and the dogs played at 
sleep-listening with one ear up. The year's stores 
being delayed by the rains, there was little to eat, so 
hungry men cast wistful eyes down the valley. When 
at last word came of the supply wagons stuck in a 
mudhole on the home pasture, we all turned out to 
help. We unloaded the wagons, hauled them with 
ropes out of one mudhole and another, then loaded up 
again to repeat the trouble. But dinner that day was 
an event. 

Next came the first of the autumn sportsmen, a 
Chicago banker; the place was in a rush of prepara- 
[271] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

tion, and the Boss went off with a pack-train of five 
riggings. He had fifty miles to go across the moun- 
tains, there to be married to a lady, thence to bring 
her home — or failing that, a barrel of whisky. The 
pack animals were to carry the trousseau. Long 
afterwards I heard that the return was a double 
triumph of both — the lady for the Boss, and the 
whisky for the boys. 

While I sat on the hearth at the Dog Ranch a man 
rode up to the house, dismounted, and put his head 
in at the door, asking directions for Jackson's Hole. 
An honest man would have walked in expecting din- 
ner, would have been welcome to something more than 
directions for a fifty-mile ride through a most awful 
storm. The stranger was dressed like a bank clerk, 
the toes sticking through his worn-out city shoes ; he 
was wet to the hide and exhausted, he rode a superb 
horse without a saddle. We watched him go down to 
the river, — not suffering like a town tenderfoot, but 
riding, — we saw him almost carried away in the deep 
ford, and then he disappeared into the swirl of sleet; 
a robber flying from justice. 

Now the hunters are all forest-rangers of the State 
of Wyoming to guard the timber and the game ; and 
[272] 



THE LONG TRAIL 

If the outlaws would only leave the elk alone, they 
might kill all the sheriffs they liked. But sometimes, 
when business is slack and purses are tight, the out- 
laws amuse themselves by slaughtering elk. 

Naturally the hunters object, and shortly before my 
arrival there was a little unpleasantness — one episode 
out of man} 7 . A party of hunters were ambushed 
near the Dog Ranch by a band of outlaws, and were 
forced to retreat with some loss of dignity. Also 
there arose a feud between a lumber-camp, which was 
supplied with venison by a robber, and a certain 
forest-ranger who stopped the supply. The lumber- 
men were laying for that ranger, and on my way 
down Green River I stopped at the camp in his com- 
pany. There was reason for some little watchfulness 
— I had no gun. 

Here I was face to face at last with the problem 
of a six-months' ride across the Great Desert. To 
the eastward lay Colorado, a labyrinth of high alps, 
and beyond that New Mexico and Eastern Chihuahua, 
said to be bare of forage. To the westward one could 
only get clear of the impassable Grand Canyon of 
the Colorado by way of Death Valley, the Gila Desert, 
and Sonora, where many expeditions had perished of 
[273 ] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

thirst. Straight ahead was a region cut to pieces by 
a maze of impenetrable chasms, then the Navajo and 
Apache Indian countries where I was sure to be 
scalped, and beyond that the land of the Border 
Ruffians, where I was fairly certain to be murdered. 
All three routes led into Mexico, where I could not 
possibly find the way unless I followed trail directions 
in an unknown tongue. 

With a wagon carrying forage and water — how 
about cliffs? With a bicycle which needs no forage 
or water — how about deep rivers? With wings? 
Alas ! despite the best hair-restorers mine have not 
yet sprouted. With saddle and pack-horse I must 
find grass and water every day or perish. Musing 
these cheering details I went straight ahead by the 
middle route, and, thanks to the cowboys and out- 
laws, my bones are not Bleaching on the sands. 

Being very lonely, and a natural-born fool, I had 
taken up with a loose-footed barber for company, 
and now, as we descended Green River Valley, I hoped 
at every ford that he would. get washed away. Every 
emergency was to be viewed now as a fresh deterrent 
to the barber — but he was faithful. Crossing the 
Union Pacific Railway at Green River City, we were 
[274] 



THE LONG TRAIL 

chased by five cheerful locomotives into a quicksand, 
where my horse was nearty drowned — my partner got 
across dryshod. Swimming the river in a bad place 
a few days later, the pack-horse tried to use me as 
an islet in midstream from whence to survey the 
scenery — that barber said he had saved my life. Bless 
him! 

Next we came to some gentle, alluring hills which 
curled up nicely to an overhanging comb. Higher 
and higher as we advanced, ridge beyond ridge went 
up like rollers on a sea-beach, hurricane-lashed, gigan- 
tic, thousands of feet in sheer height, mountains which 
curled to a jagged edge of overhanging precipice. 
Swinging eastward through the trough between two 
waves, we found the gorgeous Red Creek Canyon, 
which led, like the path of Israel, through the depths 
of this Red Sea, and so out into the rolling sagebrush 
valley called Brown's Park. This district is, like 
Jackson's Hole, an outlaw stronghold tenanted in part 
by respectable, well-to-do robbers. To the westward 
of it, in the canyons of Green River, there is a meadow 
fenced by cliffs, a hiding-place for stolen herds of 
cattle and robbers in retreat; indeed, descending Red 
Creek Canyon, we must have crossed the dim trail 
[275] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

which leads to this mysterious pasturage. The trail 
enters the mountains from one of the Brown's Park 
ranches, the owner of which is an expert at staving off 
awkward inquiries. A cowboy told me how once at 
this ranch he saw a bunch of cattle driven up the hills, 
close followed by a sheriff's posse in hot pursuit. 
Only by misdirections to the sheriff were the outlaws 
saved from capture; and the officers of the law are 
still in the dark as to where the trail begins and where 
it leads to. Here, at the very gateway of the hidden 
stronghold, it was my curious fortune to meet the 
garrison. My partner and I had made camp in the 
ranch meadows, and at sundown I strolled to the house 
to buy potatoes. While I was there four cowboys 
came down out of the hills, and at their appearance 
my host became flurried and uneasy, making hasty 
excuses to get rid of me. Later in the night I heard 
the strange horsemen clattering up the loose stones of 
the hillside, bound, no doubt, by the hidden trail, to 
the outlaw camp in the canyons. That was my second 
meeting with desperadoes in hiding, and I had the ad- 
ditional pleasure in Brown's Park of dining with a 
notable robber — I may not name him, the guest of a 
public enemy eats under flag of truce. 
[276] 



THE LONG TRAIL 

Here, the southward mountains are cleft to the 
roots, and Green River flows into the red jaws of the 
terrific canyon Lodore. We passed to the eastward, 
and crossed several ranges of mountains, with wild 
and lonely valleys between, each with its river and its 
thread of settlement. In one hundred and eighty- 
three miles we had met fifty-four persons and so felt 
that we were entering a crowded country, when, swing- 
ing down out of the Roan Mountains, we saw the steel 
rails gleaming in the Grand River Settlements, and 
cantered through the farms to the city of Grand Junc- 
tion, Colorado. Here my partner saw five barbers' 
shops in a row ; the painted poles bewitched him, and 
the razors and the scissors cried out to him. 

He wrung my hand at parting, deeply moved — he 
to exercise his virtues in their natural sphere, and I 
for the long trail. 

Before facing the desert again I had a two-days' 
debauch on milk and honey, whisky, cigars, fruit, and 
chocolates. It is curious how one puts all one's pleas- 
ures to one's mouth, especially the feminine. Hitting 
the trail, I climbed up out of the walled desert of 
Grand River into a nice park ten thousand feet high, 
where there are woods and grassy meadows, songbirds, 
[277] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

frosty nights, and running waters. Two days' ride 
through paradise brought me to the end, the edge. 
This State of Colorado is so named after the vivid red 
of its quartzite rocks, and here flaming scarlet walls 
went down into a blue of moonlight. Immense chasms 
defined a labyrinth of embattled cliffs, and beyond the 
farther wall of chaos rose clustered peaks to heaven. 
I must get my three horses across, and there was no 
trail. The way was down a four-thousand-foot bank 
of grass, where I led my unwilling beasts with brutal 
ropes round their noses. There was heaps of trouble 
at the bottom, for the floor of the Unaweep Canyon 
would puzzle a mountain goat. This led down into 
the canyon Dolores, which was worse, because I could 
not find the way up the farther wall. Sheer above 
rose the scarlet heights on every side, each castellated 
mountain crowned with cool, green forest, while the 
depths in which I wandered glowed with a furnace 
heat. On the third day I found a mighty bay of 
cliffs, with a gap in the middle guarded and half filled 
by a monster column. The slope below might have 
been the ruins of a London set on edge, and my horses 
fought desperatety rather than face that particular 
stairway to paradise. Beyond the pillar there were 
[278] 



THE LONG TRAIL 

cattle-tracks up the edge of a knife-like ridge, the 
way swinging across to some projecting ledge which 
hung in space, then back again, and up to something 
worse. 

My saddle-horse got the rope under his tail, and 
bucked like a fiend, but his gait was always rough 
anyway, and his pitching no worse than his trot, so 
I kept my seat. Then the led horse pulled him over 
a crag and he fell ten feet; but I got off at the top. 
All three horses plunged, reared, and fought me in 
places where there really was no room for argument; 
the scrub of pine and cedar became impenetrable; 
then at last, at Point Despair, the stairway eased to 
a slope. After many hours of hard fighting I had 
conquered the Gateway trail, and seventeen miles of 
park and prairie brought me to the first ranch on the 
Mesa la Sal in Utah. How had I come? asked the 
cowboys. " Followed your tracks," said I ; " where 
you drove cattle any fool could ride." " We didn't," 
said the cowboys ; " we headed cattle into the bottom 
at sundown. They worked their way up hunting- 
grass, and we found them on the rim rocks in the 
morning." 

Next day I came upon a sheep-herder, who sat on 
[279] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

a log, his dog beside him, his rifle on his knees. 
" Sorry to see you here," said I, for the pasturage 
was fine. " So am I," answered the destroyer; 
" beastly shame, isn't it ? I brought my herd 
here last week, another bunch came last night, 
and we're waiting to see if the cowboys will run us 
out. If they don't there are five more herds to 
follow." 

Across these States I had seen the country reduced 
to desert by the sheep, the grass torn out by the roots 
so that cattle and horses starved, and stock-owners 
reduced to beggary or flight. In one Colorado dis- 
trict a sheepman had come with thirty thousand head, 
and for ten years ravaged the country. For ten 
years the cattlemen tried peaceable methods ; at- 
tempted to buy out the enemy. In the end the sheep- 
man was waited upon by a hundred and fifty armed 
riders, who strongly advised him to go. He went, 
but it was six years before the land recovered and 
the cattle-owners again had accounts at the bank. 
Now, here was the enemy camped in the beauti- 
ful Mesa la Sal, wondering if the cowboys would 
object. 

I rode pretty hard that day, and at night brought 
[280] 



THE LONG TRAIL 

warning to some cowboys. If ever you hear of thou- 
sands of sheep butchered at night by masked riders, 
or driven headlong over a precipice, that only means 
the saving of the stock range. The sheep-owner has 
the lawyers at his back, even if he destroy the whole 
industry of a country and replace a score of hard- 
working cowboys with one half-witted herder. I side 
with the masked riders, because human rights are 
stronger than any law. 

From the cow-camps down into the Desert, and 
there I saw a lone rock, the natural statue, two hun- 
dred feet high, of a great Red Indian chief, his robe 
drawn about him, his bare head thrown back as though 
he were speaking. I have never seen so grand a monu- 
ment. 

I was following then the trail of the Kids, of the 
boy mail-riders who in these parts ride to outlying 
settlements fifty or a hundred miles across the Desert. 
The mail-bag is slung on their saddles, they dress as 
cowboys, wear big revolvers, despise all other boy- 
kind whatsoever, and are much hated and envied by 
boy-persons. Here is an ideal for boys to dream of, 
only, unfortunately, there are no pretty girls to res- 
cue from robbers, no Indian scalp-hunters to fly from, 
[281 ] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

and the riders I met were heartily sick of their 
job. 

By the mail-rider's trail I found my way to the 
Mormon outposts, where I began to find out about the 
great outlaw stronghold of Utah. 



[282] 



XVI 
THE TRAIL OF THE OUTLAW 

WHAT are the outlaws like? To recognize 
an outlaw at sight requires a more subtle 
observation than I dare pretend. There is 
a queer look in the eyes of many cowboys — that of a 
brave man riding to visible destruction, and this is 
intensified if they sink to crime. A peculiar droop of 
the eyelid often marks the felon, a certain hardness 
of the face comes to the gentlest lads who have gone 
wrong, and every murderer I ever met was quiet, reti- 
cent, watchful, cynical. All these qualities one may 
detect by watching for a day or two the shifting 
moods of an outlaw. About him there is an atmos- 
phere of one doomed beyond all hope, all pardon, and 
yet at first contact he only differs from other men 
in charm. 

I am moved to gush, to be sentimental, to suggest 

that such a man is not like the conventional criminal, 

a disease in human shape, with a gorilla's intelligence 

and a jackal's courage, that he is at the lowest esti- 

[283 J 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

mate a mighty beast of prey, and that, considering 
his open, unflinching war against powers celestial and 
terrestial, it is not mawkish to extend Christian pity 
to a fallen spirit. 

My first warning on meeting an outlaw was an un- 
canny sense of being seen through, next I was made 
aware of a reserve as impenetrable as that of the well- 
bred Englishman, and, this being accepted, found 
myself drawn, like steel to a magnet, into a curious 
intimacy. I was welcomed in homes, camps, even 
strongholds of the most dangerous criminals in the 
world. In a town I took elaborate precautions, secur- 
ing my treasure-belt, harness, and horses from thieves 
or cheats. Among outlaws who live b} r robbery, and 
defend themselves b}~ murder, I traveled seven hun- 
dred miles with no misgivings. Twice I ran some 
risk, but that was through being mistaken for a 
robber. 

The bandits with whom I camped and traveled did 
not pose as such, but by cautious inquiry I found some 
of them to be notable men with a price on their heads 
" dead or alive." Frankly I asked them for informa- 
tion about the robbers, with equal candor they gave 
me most valuable help, or, if the scent got too warm, 
[284] 



THE TRAIL OF THE OUTLAW 

they lied. That made the inquiry difficult, but sup- 
pressing all facts told in confidence, all names of in- 
formants — some of whom placed their very lives in my 
hands — and all details useful to the law, I can still 
give verified evidence throwing light on the whole 
system of outlawry as it was up to January, 1900. 
If I leave out the best parts of the story it is because 
men's lives are at hazard. 

The social disease of outlawry is much reduced in 
scope and virulence as settlement extends across the 
West. Judge M'Gowan's gangs of desperadoes 
actually ruled California in the early times of the gold 
rush, when in five years there were forty-two hundred 
homicides. Mr. Plummer, Sheriff of Montana City in 
1864, used his official authority to wipe out rival out- 
laws, being himself captain of a gang of highway 
robbers numbering one hundred and thirty, and re- 
sponsible for one hundred murders. Such feats are 
no longer possible, but the government being still very 
weak and quite incompetent, it is not surprising to 
find even now a banditti which has robbed or wrecked 
scores of express trains, dozens of coaches, banks, and 
small towns, and in the Desert is destroying the cattle 
industry. 

[ 285 ] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

I found that during the last decade a system of 
robber bands has existed along a curved line twenty- 
five hundred miles in length. Since 1890 many of 
their strongholds have been swept away by armed 
citizens. The Tonto Basin gang, the Coconino gang, 
the Clock, Dalton, and Cook gangs, the Mexican 
Lopez and Guerrero gangs have all been shot out. 
Twenty-seven robbers were shot in the Tonto alone. 
There remain the Jackson's Hole and Hole-in-the-wall 
gangs of Wyoming, the Brown's Park and Robbers' 
Roost gangs of Utah, a little gang near Wilcox 
(Arizona), certain Border Ruffian gangs on the 
Texas-Mexico Line, and the Indian Territory gangs. 
These two last I know nothing about, not having met 
them, but the total numbers are given as four hundred 
men living entirely by robbery-under-arms. The 
various gangs are said — but this is not confirmed — 
to communicate by means of cipher advertisements in 
a matrimonial paper. The general headquarters of 
the S3 r stem is a great central stronghold, the Robbers' 
Roost in Utah. 

In my attempt to reach this mysterious place, I 
came, in Southeastern Utah, to a range marked in 
"the maps Sierra Abajo, but known as the Blue Moun- 
[ 286 ] 



THE TRAIL OF THE OUTLAW 

tains. There I found what must have been a very big 
cattle ranch, founded by a supposed English lord of 
eccentric tastes. For his cowboys he engaged all the 
T3ad men he could find, and they robbed him out of the 
business. Three miles southward of the ranch is the 
Mormon Colony of Monticello, where many years ago 
these wicked cowboys attended a ball, making the 
reverend elders to dance to the tune of revolver-shots 
fired at shrinking feet. Among these Mormons, too, 
was one Tom Roach, who at another entertainment 
suddenly turned wolf, shot a man for dancing with 
his wife, and took up an offertory of purses. A 
young lad had the courage to take a shot at Roach, 
but unhappily missed him and killed a woman. 
Then the new wolf out of the Mormon fold rode off 
to join the wolf-pack at the ranch. The wolf-pack 
matured into the Robbers' Roost gang, now an out- 
law firm of twelve years' standing, numbering thirty- 
four partners. 

I thought in my innocence that once I reached 
Monticello, where the Mormons must know all about 
it, I would easily secure a guide to take me on to 
the stronghold. Not a bit! Why, when I stabled 
my horse with the Very Reverend Bishop of Monti- 
[287] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

cello, he thought ill of me at once. Want to go ta 
the Robbers' Roost? In haste he sent out, warning 
the whole community against me — I was an outlaw! 
I could not get an}<thing to eat, had no end of trouble, 
and it was quite late in the evening before I found 
the milk and honey of a Mormon household — being 
hungry enough to chew up log-barns in default. 

A New York paper has described the stronghold 
as a fortified cave, equipped with machine guns, 
guarded by sentries, only approached by one trail, 
and that death for intruders. This vision is furnished 
with a grand piano, electric lights, and telephones. 
Imagination is, indeed, the soul of journalism, and 
outlawry must be gilded to allure young fools into 
crime. As for me, who traveled by stony trails in 
search of facts, I have, in talk with members of the 
gang, seen their hard mouths twist to an ugly grin 
over the inventions of the Yellow Journalists. The 
way of the outlaw is a steep and bloody track through 
days of splendid excitement, nights of awful despair, 
and the only end is a violent death at the Gate of 
Everlasting Damnation. I saw few modern conveni- 
ences in the cabins of the outlaws ; their homes were 
common ranches, their camps below the average of 
[288 ] 



THE TRAIL OF THE OUTLAW 

comfort. Once, years ago, I stumbled into an outlaw 
camp which was actually starving. I was kicked out. 

The headquarters of the bandits may be easily 
located on a map. See where the Green and Grand 
Rivers meet to form the Colorado. Just below that, 
the west bank of the Colorado is a precipice called 
the Orange Cliffs. To the north is the San Rafael 
Canyon, to the south the Dirty Devil Canyon, torrents 
of rushing mud lost in profound gorges. The tract 
of land on top of the Orange Cliffs, entirely sur- 
rounded by canyons, can only be reached by one or 
two difficult trails. Here stands a log house, the 
Robbers' Roost, with its corrals and spring of water, 
pasturage for horses and cattle ; the cliffs are a fence, 
and the whole district a secure retreat from justice. 
The garrison generally numbers about ten out of 
thirty-four members of the gang. The house is 
cheered by the presence of one or two ladies, wives of 
outlaws; and in 1896 there were two Mormon girls 
stolen from Castle Valley who made no moan over their 
bondage. The place is just an ordinary ranch. 

Captain M'Carty, described as general manager, is 
thirty-five to forty years of age, widowed of a Mor- 
mon wife who died eight years ago. He is from 
[289] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

Oregon, a cowboy, horse-breaker, and expert roper, 
inclined to " play tough," and has one murder to ac- 
count for, that of an Indian. His son is a member of 
the gang; also a nephew, son of Bill M'Carty who 
was shot in 1886 while robbing the bank at Delta in 
Colorado. Mr. Butch Cassidy, second in command, is 
a cowboy, Roman Catholic. Mr. Jackson has four 
murders to his record. Messrs. Mickleson and Cofod 
are Danes, sheep-herders and Mormons, who shot the 
sheriff of San Pete County, Utah, and were for twelve 
months hidden by their friends in a coal-pit before 
they joined the gang. Also there are the Roberts 
brothers, who helped to kill the sheriff of Albany 
County, Wyoming; David Lant, a Mormon English- 
man; John Wesley Allen, Methodist, a Texan horse- 
breaker; and Mr. Johnson, a member of the original 
wolf-pack. The} 7 are nearly all cowboys. 

" The Union Pacific Railway and Pacific Express 
Companies offer 2000 dollars per head, dead or alive y 
for the six robbers who held up the Union Pacific mail 
and express train ten miles west of Rock Creek Sta- 
tion, Albany County, Wyoming, on the morning of 
2d June, 1899." 

So read the poster — " 2000 dollars per head, dead 
[290] 



THE TRAIL OF THE OUTLAW 

or alive." The express car had been blown up with 
dynamite, the express agent, after a gallant fight, 
fell mortally wounded, and the robbers got away 
with the treasure-chest — some eighty thousand dol- 
lars. 

At Rock Creek the telegraph clerk awakened the 
agent, the agent ran for the sheriff, the sheriff aroused 
the sleeping town with a call for volunteers. Lights 
flashed from windows, men were shouting as they 
belted on their arms, saddled in haste, gathered in the 
street, waited for the sheriff's word, then clattered all 
away into the Desert. Down the track they rode at 
a steady trot to where the men stood with lanterns, 
calling to them. The horsemen scattered out, search- 
ing the ground, then one of them lifted his head yell- 
ing, and all gathered once more to swing into the 
horse-tracks of the robbers. Northward they rode in 
silence, while the light spread, while the sun rose, while 
the quivering air infolded them with heat. Silent 
they went all da} 7 through the burning haze and blind- 
ing light. In the evening they came to reefs of rocks, 
where the tracks led through a gap ; and the pursuers 
went on weary, determined, eyes half-closed. All of 
a sudden little flames spat out at them from the rocks ; 
[291 ] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

horses reared and bolted, men fell headlong, there was 
shooting at the air, shouting, panic ; then all was 
quiet in the waning light of evening where the sheriff 
lay in his blood and slow wings flapped by overhead. 
That is the usual thing, and the robbers go back to 
their strongholds quite secure. 

Now the robbing of trains, from a cold-blooded, 
business point of view, has many drawbacks. The 
engine-driver is apt to lash out a hose-pipe firing boil- 
ing water, the train is liable to be full of men with 
rifles, the treasure-car to be armor-plated, and a lot 
of good robbers have been spoiled with bullets or rope 
past all repairing; then a posse of riders in pursuit 
— whereas lifting cattle is a healthy occupation and 
most remunerative. 

So dearly does the cowboy love dumb animals that 
west of the Rockies there is an indiscriminate promis- 
cuous stealing of cows. Where stockmen make a 
handsome living by the theft of each other's cattle, 
they cannot, as amateurs, resent the raids of their 
professional brethren, the outlaws. Indeed the cow- 
boys and the robbers are on the best of terms. For 
instance, in the winter of 1898-99, two cowboys, hold- 
ing a bunch of cattle on the Blue Mountain Mesa, 
[292] 



THE TRAIL OF THE OUTLAW 

fell in with a party of outlaws, who politely asked 
them to dinner. They rode to the outlaws' camp, 
which was in a strong position for defense. There 
they had a beautiful time, dined on their own beef, 
and felt quite at home, except that one of the robbers 
always stood over them with a loaded rifle. 

A few days later, sixty of their cattle were missing, 
so they hunted around for the tracks of the friendly 
robbers. The trail led down into the Grand Canyon 
and across the Colorado to the mouth of Dirty Devil 
River. After that the robbers must have driven the 
stock in the river-bed, for there was not one track on 
the banks, so the cowboys scouted carefully up Dirty 
Devil Canyon. There was the outlaws' camp-fire still 
smoking, nobody at home, and the stolen cattle were 
grazing close by on the hillside. For once the robbers 
actually lost their plunder, because the two punchers, 
rounding up their stock, rede off in triumph. 

From the point of view of the stolen cow, the gen- 
tlemen of the Robbers' Roost are too brusque. In 
1897 a bunch of two hundred head were taken across 
the Grand Canyon, and must have had a most un- 
pleasant passage. For lack of a trail, the robbers 
rigged a windlass at the top of the cliffs, then making 
[293] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

each animal fast by the horns, lowered her down a 
rock-chute. Then there was the river to swim, where 
a third of the sorely abraded cattle got drowned. 
Climbing the eastern cliffs, the stock were then run off 
their legs into Colorado, a posse of citizens being in 
hot pursuit of the robbers. Not that the outlaws 
were at all flurried, for they had time to steal a herd 
of horses, drive these into Utah, sell out, and so home 
for a well-earned rest at the stronghold. One robber 
stayed off at Bluff, a Mormon village, lost his share of 
the spoil over a game of poker, held up the winner, 
relieved him of a purse and revolver, and so home- 
ward, belated but cheerful, to the Roost. 

Of course this system of small sales and a quick 
turnover causes much irritation among the ranchers. 
But it only represents the retail wing of the business, 
and the wholesale department has to be managed more 
carefully. Stolen bunches of cattle are collected at 
the Robbers' Roost pasturage ; the brands are altered 
to suit ; then the annual herd is driven gently north- 
ward through Moab and Delta, then by a secret trail 
over the Roan Mountains. The rendezvous is, say, 
at Rattlesnake Bluffs, where the Hole-in-the-wall gang 
has a herd of Wyoming cattle waiting for fair ex- 
[294] 



THE TRAIL OF THE OUTLAW 

change. Taking the Robbers' Roost herd, the Hole- 
in-the-wall gang drives on across .Wyoming and sells 
out on the Northern Pacific Railway in Montana. 

The cattle, now a thousand miles from where they 
were stolen, can be sold in perfect security; and the 
Robbers' Roost gang has Montana stock to offer in 
the Arizona market. 

I found the outlaws most reticent as to their ar- 
rangements for agencies, brokerage, and banking; 
nor could I persuade any bankers or cattle-dealers to 
explain their business methods in dealing with Rob- 
bers' Roost Limited. That gave me no end of worry. 
However, I doubt if any member of the gangs would 
accept his share of the spoils in mere acceptances, or 
notes of hand, and the transactions are probably on a 
cash basis in gold on delivery. 

Robbers' Roost Limited does its shopping at the 
Mormon colony of Moab, sending an occasional pack- 
train for supplies. The Moabites also keep shod 
horses ready to be " stolen " when needed. On such 
occasions the horses " robbed " from the Moabites are 
always punctiliously returned, also a certain pickax 
which has assisted in no less than seven deliveries of 
prisoners out of the local jail. 
[295] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

The Mormons at Bluff disapprove of robberies, sa 
they told me, but are certainty far from unkind. For 
example, at 6 p. m. on the 12th of July, 1899, two 
well-armed " cowboys " rode into Bluff. They had 
some trouble in getting hay for their fourteen ponies, 
so it was eight o'clock before they supped on hot bread 
and milk at the stopping-house. Later in the even- 
ing they wanted to sell or trade off some of the ponies, 
but the shrewd Mormon elders did not care to accept 
their bills of sale, because there was doubt as to the 
title of ownership. Indeed, the two gentlemen were 
Mr. Butch Cassidy and Mr. Johnson, from the Rob- 
bers' Roost by way of Dandy crossing. In the 
morning they rode away, and some days later came a 
party of detectives in pursuit. The officers remained 
a week making inquiries, and finally departed on the 
wrong trail. But even had they been close on the 
track of the robbers, what chance could they have with 
one horse apiece in pursuit of men who knew the coun- 
try, and could easily cover a hundred miles a day ! 

A horse in a fright will take a great many steps 
to the square yard, and I fancy those detectives 
trampled their own shadows all to pieces. 

" Of course," said the people at Bluff, " we strongly 
[296] 



THE TRAIL OF THE OUTLAW 

disapprove of the robbers. They pay cash, good 
prices, too, and they're sure polite to the women-folk." 
The robbers are popular heroes. 

Yet with all that they rarely enter a house without 
posting a sentry on guard. And especially they need 
all their shyness in the Indian country since they 
rashly stole six hundred head of cattle from the 
Navajo nation. The Navajos, ever partial to scalps, 
would delight in getting a robber. Thus three days 
before I reached Red Lake trading post, on the main 
southward trail of the outlaws, three men camped there 
in the sands, who kept their fire burning for barely 
twenty minutes, and were careful to hide their faces 
from the trader. " They had come," they said, " two 
hundred miles on water and mountain scenery — and 
damned little water." They were bound from Rob- 
bers' Roost for canyon Diablo on the railway, prob- 
ably intending to be good cowboys in San Francisco 
or Denver, while they spent their hard-earned savings 
on a drunk. Even robbers must have their summer 
vacation. 

In the whole desert region I met only one man who 
openly expressed his abhorrence and contempt for 
outlaws. One day a cowboy had called at his camp, 
[297] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

and said from the saddle, " Shut your mouth about 
us, or clear out of this district." 

He cleared out. 

Bad talk about the robbers is only unwise; to 
betray them is dangerous. In 1895 Mr. Parker and 
two other robbers held up an express train near Ash 
Fori:, Arizona, and the sheriff's posse, following, over- 
took the fugitives, who showed fight. One was shot 
and one escaped, but Parker was captured and con- 
ve}-ed to Phoenix. Feeling uneasy in the Phoenix jail,. 
P; rker shot one of his warders, wounded a citizen, and 
got clear away, heading at once for home at the Rob- 
bers' Roost. All would have gone well with the gen- 
tleman, but that on the Painted Desert he was reduced 
by desperate need to call at an Indian trading post 
known as Willow Springs. 

Now Mr. Preston, the trader, and Mr. Parker, the 
outlaw, had worked together as cowboys on the range. 
Parker suspected nothing, and had supper in no fear 
whatever. But the trader knew his guest, not only 
as a former comrade, but also as a hunted man with 
a price on his head — wanted for robbery and murder. 
Parker rode away in peace, traveled thirty miles, and 
near the verge of Grand Can3 T on slept the sleep of 
[298] 



THE TRAIL OF THE OUTLAW 

the tired, never suspecting that his host was out on 
his trail with a dozen Navajo trackers, such as never 
fail. Parker awoke to find himself a prisoner, was 
given up for the reward of two thousand dollars, and 
duly hanged for his crimes. 

The cowboys say that Mr. Preston took money for 
the blood of his own comrade; but when I heard of 
this man who had done his duty as a citizen in face of 
almost certain vengeance, and when I knew that he 
still dared to live alone on the Painted Desert, distant 
but four days' march from the great stronghold, I 
felt that it would be an honor to meet with him. 

Crossing the Painted Desert, I reached a little can- 
yon where there is a pool of dirty water under a rock. 
There was a camp of cowboys, and as we all sat late 
round the fire„ our talk was stopped of a sudden by 
the sound of wheels. A man drove into the camp, 
and presently I learned that the visitor was the trader, 
Mr. Preston, whose life could never be quite safe 
among the cowboys unless he came as their guest. 
The boys were loosing his horses, and he was giving 
them a drink from a stone bottle, when, leaving the 
fire, I walked up to him. 

"Mr. Preston, I think?" 
[299] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

" Yes." 

" The gentleman who got that robber? " 
Thinking, no doubt, that I came from the Robbers' 
Roost to kill him, the trader let out a rough growl, 
his hand went to his hip, and in another instant I 
should have been shot. The boys jumped straight 
at him, held him back, and explained that I was not 
armed. Then I ate my words. Bad manners in a 
drawing room are detestable enough, but on the 
Desert a thing beyond excuse. 



[300] 



XVII 
THE DESERT 

I HAVE to deal now with matters still more re- 
mote from London and suburban secular in- 
terests, from the tables of the money-changers, 
and the seats of them which sell clients. There is 
one more trail, the last, the loneliest, which many of 
us in the Legion have traveled, leaving no word, a 
trail which has no name. 

It is such an old trail ; " now Moses . . . led 
the flock to the backside of the Desert, where the 
Spirit appeared unto him in a flame of fire." Many 
have followed in his track, have been their " forty 
days in the wilderness," have seen things unspeak- 
able: young Indians fasting as suppliants for the 
ordeal by torture which shall approve them warriors ; 
sailors waiting the end where white wings hover about 
some lost boat, and the sea, sunward, is gold like unto 
clear glass ; travelers led on by mirage into dream- 
land — all whorfhave entered the Valley of the Shadow. 
[301 ] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

I have to deal with that unearthly trail, and some, 
reading between the lines, may understand. 

I came to a part of the Desert where there stood 
natural rocks which, sculptured by slow abrasion of 
the wind-borne sand, stood sheer upon a plain like 
castles, temples, and embattled palaces of some dream- 
city. They seemed quite near when first I saw them 
through the quivering heat, but a ride of fifty miles 
hardly brought me abreast of their walls, their spires. 
Three times from high rock slopes I saw the long bat- 
tlements loom above blue haze ; and solitary mounds, 
columns, cathedrals, appeared at intervals for several 
days, outlying the city. No building ever raised by 
human hands could rival those lone rocks in their 
awfulness, their haunting beauty. 

Then I came to a wave of sandstone towering about 
a hundred and fifty feet over the rock sea. Its known 
length is more than a hundred miles, and, like the 
crest of a tidal wave, its overhanging comb seems 
poised for the fall — yet, frozen as though by enchant- 
ment, remains poised forever. For a day I rode under 
the wave seeking a passage, and when at last a pass- 
able traverse was reached, I found it led only into a 
chaos of other such breakers most difficult to thread. 
[302] 



THE DESERT 

Good photographs, both of this comb-ridge and the 
monuments, I got from the Mormons at Bluff, but 
ranking, as they must, among the earth's wonders, I 
have not seen mention of them in any published records 
of travel. They are upon the Navajo Reservation, 
just south of the Rio San Juan. 

Before leaving Bluff in the San Juan Canyon, to 
traverse this Navajo Desert, I was warned that, apart 
from the certainty of death by thirst, I should be 
most assuredly scalped. Also a party of prospectors 
came in gaunt with thirst and called me a fool. So 
I engaged a Navajo, the respectable Manito. He 
spoke Spanish, I English, so there was a silence be- 
tween us which might be felt. He found his own 
horse, but where the deuce he discovered such a scare- 
crow remains to this day a mystery of the Desert. 
He found fuel for camping, grass occasionally, some- 
times even the trail ; but one night made a dry camp, 
lost within a hundred yards of a running stream, 
which here, emerging for a while from underground, 
flowed openly on the surface. At one dollar and a 
half a day and the run of his teeth, Manito showed 
a patience in delays and a forbearance from work 
which shone out in beautiful contrast to my sore haste 
[303] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

over cooking, packing, and driving, but still he would 
take quite an interest in killing off rattlesnakes where 
we camped, and in bashfully secreting such of my 
goods as pleased him. My horses at the time were a 
brace of lively cow-ponies, Messrs. Chub and Burley 
by name, who traveled all day for my amusement, 
all night for their own, making Manito sweat in 
pursuit, which was contrary to the gentleman's 
religion. 

Several times a day we met Navajos of the tribe, 
when, lounging in the saddle, Manito would show me 
off, in clucks and grunts explaining my points — his 
new white squaw who did all his work, paying for the 
privilege of serving so great a chief. One warrior 
with easy assurance, showing forth his English, de- 
manded : 

" Where you from ? " 

" England," I answered humbly. 

" England? Is that a fort? " 

There was contempt in every inflection of his voice 
as he, the lordly Navajo (pronounced Navaho), 
armed with bow and arrows, sat his scarecrow, rattled 
his harness of massive silver, fingered five hundred dol- 
lars' worth of turquoise necklace, hitched up his ten- 
[ 304] 



THE DESERT 

cent breech clout, and inquired as to this England, 
this trader's hut, beyond the edge of his world. 

The Navajos have a right to their pride. The 
tide of the Spanish conquest, flooding up out of 
Mexico, beat against this rock of the Navajo nation, 
and rolled back for the first time impotent. On the 
east the flood swept past far into Colorado, on the 
west lapped the base of Alaska, but this tiny power 
split the deluge in two. From here to Cape Horn 
was Spanish Empire, but the Navajos held their own. 
In later times they raided Spanish estates, lifted Mor- 
mon cattle, drove a Supai tribe over the mile-deep 
wall of the Grand Canyon ; in fact they became a 
nuisance. At last in 1865 came one, Kit Carson, at 
the head of a force of Frontier cavalry, who armed 
the rival tribes, the Mexicans, the Mormons, and all 
their countless enemies, with guns against the Navajo 
arrows, shot down their sheep by thousands, burned 
all their cornfields, cut away their orchards of peach 
trees. Desperately as they fought, the courage was 
starved out of the Navajos, and in twelve months they 
were reduced to eating rats. Then Carson rounded 
them up, twelve thousand in number, drove them to 
Fort Sumner, threw them into a corral, and for two 
[305] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

years fed them on rancid bacon and moldy corn. 
Their spirit was broken at last, and the chiefs crawled 
on their bellies to beg the white man for mercy. So 
they came home to their desert. 

Now they number twenty-two thousand, and, with 
their herds of sheep, cattle, horses, and goats, are per- 
haps the richest savages in the world; pursue their 
ancient industries of farming maize b\ r the streams, 
weaving curious robes in their earthen huts, forging 
silver, and cutting turquoise from their hidden mines, 
and, haughtier than ever, lack nothing from the de- 
spised white man except tobacco and sugar. 

Through all the canyons and ravines of this region 
I saw houses of masonry built like swallows' nests in 
the caverns and hollows of the cliffs — but the race 
which built them has perished. To the eastward there 
are towers of dry masonry built like the old Scotch 
peels — but the race which built them has perished. 
To the southward, all over the wide deserts of Arizona 
and northern Mexico, I saw the ditches of a nation of 
farmers whose irrigated lands were greater than 
F gy pt in acreage, whose hundreds of walled cities are 
crumbling slowly to ruin. The Spaniards who came, 
stuffy and uncomfortable in plate-armor, found the 
[306] 



Op 



THE DESERT 

cities in their prime, but by smallpox and gunpowder, 
fire-water and slavery, reduced the people to dry 
Catholic bones, all save the few surviving pueblos of 
the Moqui and the Zufii. The ruins are guarded now 
by rattlesnakes which once were worshiped in for- 
gotten shrines, and the American uses the ancient 
ditches to water modern farms. These villages in the 
cliffs, these towers on the hills, these cities of the plain, 
are dead, but they are not very old. Long before 
their time Mexico and Central America were populous 
with nations whose palaces and temples are still rich in 
gorgeous painting and most intricate sculptures, 
whose recovered calendars date six thousand years of 
vivid history. They are older than Egypt, yet they 
are not old. When the Toltees were } r oung the Miss- 
issippi valley had ancient cities, metropolitan in ex- 
tent, and of age past counting. And fifty thousand 
assured years before the mound-builders, there was a 
community in the Columbia valley of farmers and 
sculptors. How many ages of savagery went before 
that earliest of known civilizations? 

The sculptors, the mound-builders, the ancient 
Mexicans, these cave-lurkers, tower-dwellers, and city- 
builders of the Desert, the Red Indians, the Vikings, 
[307] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

the Spaniards, Dutch, Russians, English, Americans 
— nation upon nation, race upon race, as clouds driven 
before the wind, as stones built into a tower — Have 
mercy, Almighty, have mercy ! 

The sun blistered my hands, my mouth was, as 
usual, sticky and uncomfortable, furnace-blasts of 
wind lifted the sand in my face, the tracks had played 
out, and I almost wished I still had the Navajo to 
guide me, for I was lost. Such herbs and bushes as 
could live in that desert guarded their reserves of 
moisture under an armament of spines, hooks, spears, 
poison, and foul taste or nauseating smell. The poor 
things must make themselves appear unpleasant or be 
eaten, as also the rattlesnakes, tarantulas, scorpions, 
centipedes, and Gila monsters. All living creatures, 
editors included, would be gentle and charming but 
for their business necessities. 

But it was a bad look-out for me and my weary 
horses; indeed, Burle} r , the pack animal, got sick of 
the whole enterprise, and started off S. S. W. at a gal- 
lop. This was rough on Chub, the hot, fat saddle- 
beast, especially as the chase led out of the sand- 
drift on to naked up-edged rock. We were sure lost, 
[308] 



THE DESERT 

all three of us ; and little I guessed the wisdom which 
led Burley, until, discouraged by a long race, I looked 
up at the bare rock ridges — and saw close by a gallant 
row of Lombardy poplars ! It was the Mormon Oasis 
of Tuba, and we were sure saved, all three of us. 

The stubborn courage of these Western Boers — 
they are just like Boers — is spreading such colonies 
over the Desert, north into Canada, south into Mex- 
ico. I have seen their stores, their ditches for irri- 
gation, their mills, their dairies, all co-operative ; a 
people abstemious, with clean homes, and many signs 
of living religion which restrains from sin. Without 
being in the least self-righteous about it, they pay 
tithes of all they possess. 

Now I belong to a Church which would consider 
such a demand nothing less than extortion. We re- 
serve our smallest silver for the offertory, our warm- 
est advice for the poor, and temper our piety with en- 
lightened avariciousness as an example to all Jews, 
Turks, Infidels, and Heretics. We are, therefore, in a 
position to throw stones at these horrid Mormons, 
who believe in bigamy as a means of grace. 

From a secular point of view, I think that the Mor- 
mon prospers at the price of his liberty. The Church 
[309] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

cc-cperative store, underselling the little tradesmen, 
kills out all private enterprise. The Bishop, pious 
rather than literate, is a deadly enemy to the man 
who dares to think. There is plenty of physical 
vigor, dancing, love-making, laughter; but books, 
magazines, and newspapers, I seldom managed to find 
in a Mormon home, and the people were in a state of 
mental death. It was a relief to find a Gentile village, 
drunken, profligate, wildly licentious, but alive, full 
of brave little business ventures, prosperous, growing, 
where men could think, debate, and fight with hope 
in their eyes. 

For hundreds of miles along the trail, I read the 
Bock of Mormon, the tracts of the Saints. These are 
desert waters. See — the water of the Desert is foul 
with the feet of famishing beasts, bitter with salts, 
reeking with microbes, stinking, but still life to a 
dying man. Though a distorted Christianity has en- 
slaved free men, the Faith is still inspired, still divine. 
The Latter-Day Saints are only singular in that, re- 
jecting the pure waters of Life, they have come into 
the Desert with sufficient thirst to swallow anything. 

Beyond the Mormon Oasis, I came to the Painted 
Desert, where the sands have a strange power of re- 
[310] 



THE DESERT 

fracting sunlight so that the slopes glow topaz, the 
cliffs are ruby and hyacinth, and the air is like thin 
white flame. It was natural in such a place to find a 
prospector who told me that voices of the Dead were 
leading him in search for a cave of gold. That is the 
madness of the Desert, common enough, for at many 
a campfire one hears of lost mines fabulously rich, 
of men who went out sane to return as maniacs, of 
Indian secrets, of guiding charts, of bloodstained 
trails, of dying miners speechless, laden with gold. 
A big bright diamond high on the face of a precipice 
— I have seen it myself, and might be in an asylum 
but for the slabs of mica by the trail which told me 
the secret of that shining fraud. A prospector who 
found real diamonds which look like bits of gum 
arabic would throw them away. So I noted, on the 
long trail, hills of kaolin, walls of oil-shale, bitumen, 
and asphalt, traces of cinnabar, opal, ruby, corun- 
dum, tin. These might be ever so valuable, but the 
prospector passes them by in his search for the 
precious metals. Lost gold mines appeal to his mind, 
not a romance in fire clay. 

Out of the heat mist of the Painted Desert my 
trail led up a fifty-mile hill into a great cool forest of 
[311] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

pine trees. There is no water. The polecats go mad, 
and of all the grizzly horrors in that land of death, 
the hydrophobia skunk is much the worst. 

The skunk is a beast the size of a cat, with nice 
long hair of banded brown and white from nose to 
tail. He is a natural scent-bottle, and delights in his 
duty, which is to sprinkle perfume on his tail, then 
with a sharp jerk spray the fluid upon you. He gives 
freely, intending attar of roses, never grudging the 
pleasure which he was designed to bestow with his tail, 
and, being nose-blind, he has never found out that the 
attar of roses has gone bad. Should one drop alight 
upon you the very dogs will run away holding their 
noses ; you must take a scalding bath, and your clothes 
must be buried. 

They love man, seek after him, and even camp in 
his cellar ; hence the courtly Mexican phrase : " My 
house is yours, Senor ! " And when, poor things, 
they suffer from hydrophobia, they attack man, catch 
him asleep in camp, and bite his face. Then the 
man must go to the Pasteur Institute at Chicago, if 
there is time; or presently he will dread the sight of 
water, go mad, and be racked to death with convul- 
sions. Many have died that death. Sleeping one 
[312 ] 



THE DESERT 

night in the Coconino Forest, I was awakened by a 
large animal on my pillow, a skunk mad with hydro- 
phobia, trying to reach that eager nose which has so 
often led me into trouble. I shooed him away, and 
threw rocks, so that, maybe, he also was alarmed. 

Under the shadow of the San Francisco peaks, I 
left my horses for a week's rest. The Desert is a 
region of fantastical contrasts, and here, of all things, 
coaches loaded with tourists went by in clouds of dust. 
No opium dream could have felt more outrageous to 
common sense than coming out of the Valley of the 
Shadow of Death to travel by coach among these 
pantomime figures, taking themselves so seriously in 
dusters, Kodaks, and eyeglasses, as we whirled through, 
the forest glades, bound for the Grand Canyon of 
the Colorado. I would have pinched them to see if 
they were real, but for the fear of being rude. At 
the Canyon Hotel, rather tired after the seventy-mile 
drive, I was lashed to frenzied excitement by a dis- 
covery made the moment I entered the barroom. On 
pegs hung three pairs of green-duck bloomers and 
three pair blue, on hire at a shilling a time for the 
solace of ladies riding down into the canyon : and 
quite lately I found there had been no less than four 
[313] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

hundred Female Christian Endeavorers disputing 
viciously for possession. Quite apart from the ethical 
unseemliness of scratched faces, four hundred F. C. 
E. into six B. won't go. 

I sat on the rim rock at dawn staring down into 
space, into blue mist which had no bottom, as though 
the floor of the world had dropped out. Only when 
the rose flush caught the farther wall could I see dim 
shapes of mountains far beneath. That northern 
wall was twelve miles away, as far as the Battery from 
the Bronx, and in the depths between all New York 
might be lost. 

Those mounds down in the mist were mountains 
bigger than the Catskills. I was sitting in a pine 
forest like those of Norway, but the depths at my feet 
were in the climate of Central Africa. 

After breakfast we rode down by a trail blasted 
in the face of the cliffs, which cost ten thousand dol- 
lars, and is so steep that, rather than haul up water 
from the river, the hotel sends wagons forty miles 
to the nearest springs. It was like riding down the 
outside of St. Paul's Cathedral, from cross to pave- 
ment, multiplied by fifteen. 

Shrinking past the lean flanks of the upper cliffs, 
[314] 



THE DESERT 

the trail bridges a cleft to an outlying turret, winds 
round the sheer walls, loops down into the beginning 
of a chasm, and hangs over empty space. A mule 
fell off once out of sight and hearing, but, though 
never seen again, it appealed plaintively for weeks 
to the nostrils of passing tourists. Mules are spe- 
cially broke for this trail, because they are handy 
with their feet and can live without grass or water. 
The lion and the tiger, all the beasts of the field, they 
get their meat from God; but the mule is an un- 
natural hybrid, so he does not get his meat from God. 
He gobbles up the leavings. The lady tourists are 
fearless, the men wabbly, and the distance to the river 
and back, though only fourteen miles, takes four- 
teen hours. 

Sheer from the level forest falls the first wall of 
primrose flecked with orange, in long, curved ba}^s of 
precipice, each headland guarded by columns of out- 
standing rock. Below is the labyrinth of mountains, 
vaguely suggesting sculptured Hindoo temples of red 
sandstone intricately carved, floating ethereal above 
the shadows of innumerable canyons ; and far down 
beneath, under the shadows of the scarlet city, there 
is the last deep violet chasm where one may catch 
[315] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

a glimpse of a river sunk in the foundations of 
the world. That lost river winds for six hundred 
miles, sunken thousands of feet beneath the deserts. 
Such is the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, greatest 
of all the wonders of the Desert. Though I have 
wallowed in frantic description, please do not think 
that I am getting up on my hind-legs and pawing 
at the moon. It is all true. 

In the Great Desert I had an impression of riding 
through time, through ages, a wild jumble of shuffled 
centuries. This Desert is the scrap-heap of world- 
making, the dust-bin of History, full of sweepings 
thrown from the mills of God. The cowboys are 
cavaliers left over from Cromwell's wars, the Navajos 
are spare barbarians from ancient Asia, the tourists 
are shopworn goods from the twentieth centun^, the 
outlaws soiled knights from King Arthur's chiv- 
alry. So far my mind had tenure of what I saw, 
a basis for some sort of reasoning. The Yellowstone 
Park was a discarded garden from the New Jerusalem, 
the rock monuments in the Navajo Desert a sketchy 
design for some thirtieth-century metropolis, the 
Grand Canyon an experimental cataclysm from the 
[316] 



THE DESERT 

second day of the creation. Even so far my brain 
could accept the facts reverentially, with little 
prayers for help to understand. But when at last 
I fought through the red-hot valley of central Ari- 
zona, reason revolted in open mutiny. This place 
was a mistake, a fragment from some other planet, 
thrown on the wrong scrap-heap. Heaven knows I 
tried humbly to understand the world I have lived in, 
an insect intelligence groping among constellations of 
facts, an atom in creation playing as best I could, 
obedient to the rules of the game; but my little 
prayers fell flat in the Gila Desert. For hundreds 
of miles through unsupportable heat, over fields of 
broken lava, among weird hills, extended that garden 
cf the flowering cacti. The Spanish bayonet, the 
prickly pear, the ocotillo, high as an apple tree, of 
emerald sticks with gem-like foliage guarded under 
thorns, the splendid maguay and organos farther 
south, the ethereal orchards of acacia, and above all, 
in thousands of columns branching like candelabra, 
the hosts of the giant suhuaro. Every plant, every 
reptile is the armed and deadly enemy of mankind 
— the region is not of this kindly earth, not of this 
time, but belongs to some far planet in outer space, 
[317] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

where plains of dull flame, rocks of old ice, are lighted 
by swinging pairs of scarlet stars. 

Out of the silence of that world I came to a ditch 
of muddy water. Beyond, for ten delightful miles, 
the road was shaded with real leafy trees. Cattle 
switched lazy tails under the walnuts, labor-stained 
farmers were driving their gaudy women to squander 
dollars in town. So I reached Phoenix, a town of 
twelve thousand people, with electric street-cars and 
electric lights. The sidewalk was blithe with men, 
cowboys, prospectors, farm-hands, negroes, Apache 
Indians, low-caste Mexicans. It was Sunday, and in 
the crowded saloons gamblers in their shirt-sleeves sat 
impassive before their heaps of gold and silver, dealing 
faro, keno, poker, craps, roulette — the whole Sabbath 
service. Bartenders in white linen and diamonds dealt 
mixed drinks to the crowd. After sundown, ladies 
in evening dress and grease paint stood drinking 
cocktails in the intervals of their labor at the clanging, 
clattering piano. Last week two men had held up 
the Palace saloon, grabbed the gold from the tables, 
scattered loose coin across the floor, then vanished in 
a cloud of revolver smoke. Know all men by these 
presents that Arizona has turned respectable, and is a 
[318] 



THE DESERT 

law-abiding community. Alrcacty the people can 
abide the law, so long as it is not enforced. 

I was lost in the Desert as usual, and an old man 
found me sorely distressed. "A bad country? Aye, 
youngster, it's as bad as there is," he chuckled. 
" Show me a worse, and," he laughed triumphantly, 
" I'll pull out for it to-morrow ! " 

We were chasing his pack-horse over rock heaps, 
and my eyes dwelt with fervor upon the boyish grace 
of his riding. The sunlight caught the warm-hued 
leather of his " snaps," the long waves of his silvery 
hair. His sombrero darkened a wrinkled, bronzed old 
face of singular beauty, and his clear blue eyes looked 
into mine as he spoke. " Picked this up this morn- 
ing," — he passed me the fragment of a charred skull, 
— " old white man like me — I found the stake — the 
damned Apaches got him — yes, it's a bad country: 
t'other day I found a boot with a leg in it. Good 
enough country for poor old Texas Bob," and he 
laughed like a boy as he looked out into the distance. 

We were nearing an awful golden ridge, which for 
two lost days I had tried to avoid afraid of any more 
sand-drifts. 

[319] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

" Why," said Texas Bob, " that's no sand, partner, 
that's grass ! " 

Grass ! For months I had been carrying oats in 
my pack on which the horses were burning their poor 
stomachs. Grass! I had seen no grass like that 
for two thousand miles ! 

The great frontiersman gave me bread and 
water at his camp — a banquet, then a pipe, while 
we watched the little children " roping " reluctant 
dogs. 

" Thar, stranger," he said at last, when I had 
watered my horses, " you go south a piece and you'll 
see whar my wagon passed two months ago. Follow 
up to the left — it's only thirty-five miles — and you'll 
make the city. Good-by." 

So, where his wagon-wheels had bent the grass, mak- 
ing the blades to faintly catch the light, I scouted 
carefully, throwing back at times for a second try, 
on over golden hills and little valleys until the even- 
ing; then, after a luxurious night, rode hour upon 
hoar. Another track joined in, a third, a well-defined 
trail from the east, an old road, and then all rolled 
into a great, broad highway where cowboys were 
driving cattle, wagons crawled in the dust-clouds, and 
[320] 



THE DESERT 

glittering coaches flashed by on their way to the city 
of Tucson. 

Read now these Articles of War, the Laws of the 
southern Desert: For any man who fails of water 
on the trail, the punishment shall be — death; for 
touching insects and sly reptiles — death; for meeting 
Apaches on the warpath — death; for getting foul of 
escaped murderers from the Eastern States — death; 
fooling with Mexican outlaws or officials — death; for 
neglecting courtesy to man or woman, the duel and 
— death. 

To live in the Arizona deserts one must pass the 
little examinations, or be plowed under, and that 
is why the men are all so quiet, so deadly smooth. 
They are the finest men I ever met, but they have 
paid for their education. I was the guest of one 
rancher, the best of citizens, who never kills except 
in self-defense, and yet is said to have twenty-seven 
notches on his gun stock. 

I found that I was making myself unpleasantly 
conspicuous in dress by wearing no revolver. The 
weapon, to my mind, is a worse nuisance than even 
the umbrella of civilized man, which gets wet and 
unpleasant every time there is rain. A rotten bad 
[321] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

shot, always getting the worst of it in gun-fights, I 
should prefer some weapon — such as a cold boiled 
ham — which would be really useful at close quarters; 
but after reaching the Mexican Border, rather than 
Jbe flouted as a lunatic, I became the slave of fashion 
and carried a rattletrap, second-hand Colt just for 
moral effect. 

If ever I mentioned such peculiar details of life 
as the habit of homicide, the Arizona men assured me 
with pained eagerness that they were dead gentle. In- 
deed, in the whole summer there had only been twenty 
men shot, four wounded, and five cases of robbery- 
under-arms. It was an " exceptional season," I was 
told, and for a population one-fourth that of a 
single citj' ward, the most truculent critic must admit 
the charge sheet as being quite moderate. The 
Gloge coach, for example, was stopped by^ a little 
robber and a big robber, who, after collecting four 
hundred dollars, politely returned a dollar to each of 
the passengers. The little robber was so shy that he 
kept twiddling with his revolver, to the extreme dis- 
comfort of everybody concerned; and he frankly 
admitted afterwards having been in a horrible fright. 
" My mother was dying," ran the confession in prison ; 
[322] 



THE DESERT 

" I had to get to her somehow, and it was the only 
possible way to raise the money." The little robber 
was Miss Pearl Hart, of the sign of the Red Lamp, 
and all Arizona was glad when that poor wild bird, 
having failed in an attempt to kill herself, made a 
clever escape from the cage. She chirped too much 
at large and was retaken, but Arizona juries are 
chivalrous. 

In another case a rancher was too attentive to his 
housekeeper, and she, making complaint to his cow- 
boys, they rescued her. They then gave the rancher 
a decent funeral. 

Here is a tale of border chivalry, told me by a 
cowboy in hiding, sore and remorseful : Mr. Texas had 
served through the Mashona and Matabele campaigns 
when, sick of bloodshed, he came back for rest in his 
home on the Mexican border. " Very first evening," 
he said, " mother told me the niggers was stealing her 
hawgs. I went for them niggers after supper — got 
three, and one wounded. Call that peace? 'Course 
I had to ride for it — whole tribe of 'em after me. 
When I got to Pecos River, I calls on old Roy Bean 
for advice; you know his sign over the saloon, 
' Whisky, Beer, and Justice west of the Pecos.' 
[323] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

' Well,' says the old judge, ' it's a sure bad case — 
■ — only got three niggers, you say? Cost fifteen hun- 
dred dollars to get you clear! I guess it would be 
cheaper to give you a fresh horse.' He gave me a 
fresh horse, and I came to Naco. 

" Ever been at Naco? Well, half the town's in 
Mexico and half in the United States — wide street 
keeps 'em apart — so thought I'd be plumb good there. 

"Then comes Johnny Norris' trouble (Sept. 11, 
1899) ; he kept a saloon on the Mexican side, and 
there was something wrong with his bills of sale over 
a horse-trade, not enough stamps on 'em for the taxes. 
The police was going to take Johnny up country and 
murder him on the way to jail, as usual ; so some of us 
cowboys jumped in. Bob Clayton got killed, another 
fellow captured, but we sure lammed hell out of them 
Mexican guards. They got away, though, with poor 
Norris. So that night three of us rode out and 
laid for the escort on the trail. There was only 
three Mexicans in charge of Norris, and one of 
'em got away, wounded, 'cause it was too dark 
to shoot for sure. Now, partner, you'd think that 
Norris would be just falling all over himself 
with thankfulness, eh? Well, he didn't; he was 
[324] 



THE DESJERT 

sure wild, wanted to know what we meant by 
making trouble for him with the Mexicans ! Come 
across to the United States ? Not much ! Why, he'd 
got away from penitentiary — twenty years — murder, 
and he'd no more use for the United States than a 
hen for a fry-pan. Of course we couldn't do nothin', 
just had to kick ourselves all the way home to Naco, 
U. S. A. Nice peaceful time I was having ! 

" Next morning the United States Marshal comes 
up, and says he was going to arrest me. ' Is that 
so ? ' says I. ' Well,' says he, looking down my gun- 
bar'l, ' of course if you put it that way — 3'ou'd better 
ride!' So I just rolled my tail, and here I am hid 
up, Mexico howling for me one side of the line, 
and Uncle Sam the other. All I want," he added 
piteously, " is peace and quietness, if only they'd 
leave me alone." 

On the 23d of October the Bisbee people came down 
to Naco for a baseball match, and the Mexican guards, 
alarmed at being invaded, promptly opened fire on 
an excursion train full of women and children. They 
erroneously wounded one bystander. Also an Ameri- 
can, a very full citizen, did indeed invade Mexico, 
and the Mexicans got him down, beating him over the 
[325] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

head and trying hard to subdue him. Three cow- 
boys, jumping to the rescue, were capture^. 

So I found the border lined on both sides with 
National troops, and a hundred and fifty cowboys 
preparing to march on the City of Mexico. 

The Mexicans had to release their captives — too 
hot to hold; and judging by the dismal ululations 
of the wounded guards, whom I saw at La Morita, a 
very little cowboy goes a long way. 

Following the border-line eastward, I chartered a 
Mexican to pilot me across the Rocky Mountains, 
which he did so slowly that on the third day I emptied 
my^ canteens — surely a little thirst would quicken the 
gentleman's gait. As usual I added up the facts all 
wrong, for, with many fine Spanish phrases of cour- 
tesy, he left me to the sole enjoyment of the dry can- 
teens. Obedient to his parting advice, I might have 
found a spring, or might not, eighty miles south- 
southeast, but the person had a bad eye, and rather 
than trust I scouted for signs of water over country 
richly grassed, swarming with deer, and embossed with 
the very choicest of fresh grizzly tracks. The Desert 
is a book, the tracks are printed type, a dozen little 
signs are readable facts, and from all these I gathered 
[326] 



THE DESERT 

a solution. Such trails as there were on the land had 
not been used for at least twelve months, there was no 
water within fifteen miles, therefore the guide, in re- 
venge for the slight of the canteens, had intended 
my death. Happily, while he led me, I had noted a 
live trail leading eastward ; so on the second day I lit 
out for that clew to water, riding northeast across 
country, found it, followed it, and fell in with an 
American cowboy. 

" What's the matter with you ? " he asked, when 
we had talked of the weather. " Can't hear your 
voice — what's wrong? " 

" Canteen's empty," said I. " I'm rather thirsty." 

" Why, mine's full ! " he cried. 

It did not remain full. 

" Last night," I asked, " did you see a big fire in 
the south? I signaled for help." 

" Or to scare away the Apaches ? " He spoke with 
scorching contempt, and I never again lighted a fire 
in that land of the raiding savages. He brought me 
to a little ranch where two years before the Apaches 
had scalped a man on the doorstep, and there we 
found a dozen cowboys camped for a bear hunt. I 
was very weak, they tender as brothers, and when I 
[ 327 ] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

was fit for the trail they passed me on from camp to 
camp to the edge of the Mexican cattle range, sooth- 
ing my bruised vanity with surprise that I had won 
through alive. 

I never camped again, but disposing of my pack- 
horse, relied henceforward upon big fortified houses 
rarely more than a day's ride apart. Twenty years 
ago this country, over an area as large as France, was 
swept bare by the Apaches. They stole the cattle, 
outraged the women, dashed the babies against walls, 
tortured the men to death. Now these nice Indians 
are pets of the United States Government, and only 
get an occasional traveler. The bloodstained land is 
stocked with fresh cattle and a new people, ruled by 
great Frontier lords with more than feudal power. 
The ranch of Don Luis Terrazas, where I crossed it, 
was just two hundred miles wide. I found his Mex- 
ican cowboys a never-ending delight, for every brand- 
ing is as good as a first-rate bull-fight. The rush of 
a wild bull-calf from the pen, the swift roping and 
tying down, his smoke and execrations under the iron, 
then the release of the scorched and outraged animal, 
who clears out thirty cowboys in ten seconds, charg- 
ing the last man as he leaps, and bringing down the 
[328] 



THE DESERT 

wall — the bull feasts of Spain were tame compared 
with it. In tight leg-armor, and leather Eton jacket, 
a sugar-loaf sombrero heavy with silver lace, spurs of 
a four-inch rowel, a serape cloak which would knock 
a rainbow cold, the Mexican cowboy is more than pic- 
turesque. Amid the smoke and thunder of the corral 
work they are all polite as dukes over their cigar- 
ettes, weighing the low-rolling periods of their ma- 
jestic Spanish — grave, quiet, with the swagger of 
troopers, flash of weapons, gleam of white teeth, and 
fiery, brave black eyes. They are rich on twenty 
cents a day, and the girls adore them. 

One day I met the eldest son of the great Terrazas, 
traveling the Desert in state. First came an advanced 
guard, then the multitude of his riders, ten abreast, 
the wranglers with the horse herd, a bullock cart with 
cargo, a group of officers, then, far in their rear, a 
coach covered with servants, drawn by six white mules, 
the leaders four abreast, at full gallop. All this 
ninth-century feudal pageant I knocked endways with 
the mere clicking of my Kodak camera from the 
saddle, then made a final snap at my lord himself, and 
a sweeping salute for farewell. 

At the end of the Terrazas ranch was the city of 
[329] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

Chihuahua (pronounced Chewawa), and as I rode a 
scrubby little pony up the main street, I saw dancing 
ahead a horse such as one might dream of in para- 
dise. Hungry for him I drew abreast, spoke to the 
rider and gloated. He was a milk-white Arab geld- 
ing, thoroughbred bar the useful size of the feet, mane 
and tail like drifting snow, eye decidedly bad, build 
perfection. He introduced himself just then by rear- 
ing up and coming down on the top of me all 
a-straddle, and nearly broke my off knee as I swerved. 
Five days later he was mine — I said my prayers and 
gave my spurs away before I mounted ; and for once 
I judged right of a horse. Greasy heels and a thou- 
sand-mile stretch failed to lower the infernal pride 
of his neck, or break the superb grace of his action. 
All that for fifty dollars in gold ! 

So I rode down the narrowing tail of the continent, 
deaf and dumb with regard to Spanish, always more 
or less lost, on that utterly untamable beauty who 
thought he owned me. The people of the country 
believe that China is the greatest of nations, Spain 
the leading republic, England a part of London, and 
the United States easy to conquer bar one obstruction 
—Texas! They know the Texans of old— would 
[330] 



THE DESERT 

rather fight mad dragons, and they mistook me for a 
Texas cowboy such as they would not confide to Satan 
for fear of corrupting his morals ; yet never in hut 
or palace was I denied a courtly welcome. Each 
night some housewife accepted the care of my re- 
volver, and her husband charge of my gear, the honor 
of the house being bound. The black man would 
feed my horse while I stood by with a club lest the 
forage be grabbed by his starving goats and swine, 
his hungry horse or mule, his ravenous poultry. The 
wife made me maize pancakes like unto damp brown 
paper, beans, and chile — which is stewed ca3^enne 
pepper eaten with a ladle. At night the embroidered 
sheets from the best bed would be laid down on a cow- 
hide for me, and I, the uninvited Texas cowboy, was 
trusted to sleep in the one room with the fowls and the 
family. Would an English householder trust a tramp 
like that? And only in the poorest mud huts could 
I venture to force a silver dollar on the wife, when at 
parting she muttered " Mayest thou ride with God ! " 
A clay hut, a fortified homestead, a town in some 
vale of farms, such were the halting places, a day's 
ride apart where there was water, for the last seven 
hundred miles of the Great Desert. It seemed as 
[331 ] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

though there were never to be an end. Then I came 
to Zacatecas, a city of silver mines perched on the 
very watershed of the continent, on the crest of the 
Mother Range. I left the city, the Desert still reach- 
ing away ahead. 

A farmer joined me, wearing the usual suit of 
leather laced with silver and gold, cloak, sword, re- 
volver — so all Mexicans ride; and for twenty miles 
we smoked slow cigarettes, swapped stately Spanish 
compliments. Then we came to a cactus hedge just 
inside the tropics, a hedge of prickly pear. Behind 
me lay three thousand miles of conquered Desert, in 
front, for ever and ever, fields of maize. 



[332] 



XVIII 
A RECORD IN HORSEMANSHIP 

THE big fight was over, the Desert con- 
quered, and there remained only a road as 
long, say, as that from New York to 
Poughkeepsie, through civilized country down to the 
City of Mexico. So I thought, while the influenza 
caught in Zacatecas gripped every bone, set the blood 
racing with fever, and reduced me to the flat of my 
back save only during weary hours in the saddle as 
I fought on from town to town. 

Here were all the blessings of civilization, the cheat- 
ing, theft, beggary, but, added to these, certain 
peculiar graces of Mexico — heartless cruelty towards 
animals, and the unspeakable corruption of the gov- 
erning officials. The blessed natives might stew in 
their own juice for all I cared, but when I found them 
subtly stealing forage from my horse there was 
always more or less violence. At Silao it pleased me 
to charge the manager of the Grand Hotel with that 
[333] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 
abhorred crime, and I was certainly very rude. It 
is a curious trait of the Mexican that after a spasm of 
rage he develops blotches on the skin, local paralysis r 
or epileptic fits entailing a doctor's bill, sometimes the 
further account of an undertaker. Therefore I 
soothed the manager of the Grand Hotel with that 
cold, bland, deadly insult which so endears the Eng- 
lishman to all foreigners. He went through shades 
of lemon to the pallor of an unripe orange, his legs 
wabbled, and I hoped for fits; but unhappily he was 
a Spaniard by birth, and therefore not liable. The 
only result, indeed, was that the hotel was surrounded 
by troops, and in solemn procession my horse and I 
were both marched off to prison. There, after the 
usual indignities, I was placed in a fine large cell 
barred off from the jail-birds of the common yard. 
Mine was only a police-court affair — " insulting a 
citizen " ; and the procedure would begin with seventy- 
two hours' detention, during which no word could 
reach a friend or advocate outside the walls. A 
magistrate would then presume guilt, and punish ac- 
cordingly. My adversary appeared to own the Chief 
of the Police, and in any case a white man, once cap- 
tured, is blackmailed to his last dollar before he escapes 
[334] 



A RECORD IN HORSEMANSHIP 

the net. One Englishman, in default of the custom^ 
ary bribes, had at that time been lying five years in a 
Mexican jail, untried, and beyond all aid from the 
British Foreign Office. Another innocent man I 
afterwards found lying at Vera Cruz, Mr. Angus 
M'Kay, a British subject of the cleanest reputation, 
under no charge whatever, ten months detained, un- 
able to pay blackmail. His comrade was just dead 
that morning of yellow fever, he himself was visibly 
sickening for the black vomit, and we who saved him 
were only just in time. There are dozens of such 
cases, and no foreigner in Mexico is safe from the 
fiendish atrocities of Mexican law. 

Where there is common danger, Americans and 
British are one body for the common defense, and a 
number of Americans who had witnessed my arrest 
strained every nerve for my rescue. At dusk, Dr. 
George Byron Hyde came to me with word from the 
Governor of the town that I might be released on pay- 
ment of twelve dollars and a half. This I flatly de- 
clined, demanding that the Governor of the city call 
and make his personal apology to me on pain of a 
telegram to the British Minister. When I had been 
five hours in prison, the Governor called upon me, and 
[ 335 ] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

we walked out arm-in-arm. Then Dr. Hyde took my 
horse and me to his own home. 

The jail cured the influenza, but gave me dysen- 
tery, and the rest of my ride to the City of Mexico I 
only remember as a long nightmare of pain. There 
is no need to dwell on that, for all the land was beau- 
tiful, all the people were rich in courtesy, in charm, 
in music, poetry, flowers, in splendor of dress, and in 
their lovely cities. If the people lived for something 
better than their emotions, cared for graver ideals 
than mere display, there might be a real Republic, 
not a ghastly sham. Workers, thinkers, fighters, 
build up a sovereign State, not fops, not cowards. 
The workers, thinkers, and fighters seemed mainly 
foreigners. 

It was a relief to get away from such a civilization 
up into the mountains which guard the valley of Mex- 
ico. The January days were sweet with a breath of 
spring, and on one lonely hillside I found a haw- 
thorn bush flecked with the scented blossom of the 
may. There were groves of oak and glades of grass, 
and in the wild bed of a dry torrent swept the long 
trail down. One night more I slept at a wayside 
house, one last day rode over forty miles of rocky 
[3B6] 



A RECORD IN HORSEMANSHIP 

hills, then in the cool of evening gained a level plain 
with avenues of trees, white glittering towns, canals, 
roads, railways, all converging southward. The 
darkness fell as I entered a long chain of suburbs 
bright with the sparkle of electric lamps; and five 
miles on, the denser traffic, the wider streets, the pal- 
aces, churches, gardens, the lights and glitter of a 
brilliant capital. I had built up a day-dream in the 
Desert that, entering the City of Mexico, I would ride 
to the doors of some big hotel, leave my horse with the 
porter, ask the office clerk for his book, and register 
my name, from Fort Macleod, Canada. But when I 
came to the reality, the hotel man, looking me over, 
decided that all his rooms were full, that he could not 
have his tourists scared by a travel-worn cowboy, with 
a probable propensity for casual shots at the waiters. 
His was a respectable house, so I took my white horse 
elsewhere, and that was the end. 

The ride from Canada measured 3600 statute miles, 
as far, say, as from London to Timbuctoo, or perhaps 
Chicago. Three good horses covered nearly the whole 
distance, but, including pack animals, I used in all 
nine, at a total cost of $220.50. The time from June 
28, 1899, to January 21, 1900, was 200 days at 18 
[337] 



FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER 

miles a day, but for the 147 actual days of travel the 
average was a little better. 

A bell tingled somewhere in the engine-room, and 
we slowed down, rocking ever so softly. Glazed water 
reaching through white mist, chill dew on deck and 
spars, passengers venturing muffled remarks through 
borrowed opera-glasses — but still we could only feel 
the land, not see. Up on the bridge the Liverpool 
pilot held high discourse with the captain, we, under- 
neath, straining intent ears for any crumbs which fell 
from that banquet of news. The passenger who had 
the glasses leaned forward, peering; we, hustling 
him, craned all our necks to see. 

" There," he whispered, awestruck, " at last after 
seventeen years — England ! " and, indeed, there was 
a blur upon the mist, — a ship ? a square-topped house ? 
a hoarding? No. It seemed to be a placard painted 
with some great sign of welcome — loving words to 
greet us on the sea — yes, " Bald's Hair Restorer " ! 



THE END 



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